Hierarchical Models for Employment Decisions

Joseph B. Kadane and George G. Woodworth

Revised December 2001

Abstract:

Federal law prohibits discrimination in employment decisions against persons in certain protected categories. The common method for measuring discrimination involves a comparison of some aggregate statistic for protected and non-protected individuals. This approach is open to question when employment decisions are made over an extended time period. We show how to use hierarchical proportional hazards models (Cox regression models) to analyze such data. When decisions are made at one time, the proportional hazards model reduces to the familiar doubly constrained hypergeometric model.

Keywords: Age Discrimination; Bayesian Analysis; Hierarchical Model; Proportional Hazards Model

Here is the technical report as a Word document.