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Optimal data-driven hiring with equity for underrepresented groups

Yinchu Zhu, Ilya O. Ryzhov

arXiv 19 Jun 2022 · Econometrics · publishedProduction and Operations Management (2024) · 3 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:2206.09300 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

We present a data-driven prescriptive framework for fair decisions, motivated by hiring. An employer evaluates a set of applicants based on their observable attributes. The goal is to hire the best candidates while avoiding bias with regard to a certain protected attribute. Simply ignoring the protected attribute will not eliminate bias due to correlations in the data. We present a hiring policy that depends on the protected attribute functionally, but not statistically, and we prove that, among all possible fair policies, ours is optimal with respect to the firm's objective. We test our approach on both synthetic and real data, and find that it shows great practical potential to improve equity for underrepresented and historically marginalized groups.

Citation extraction

79
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in-text mentions
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distinct cited
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appendix boundary found by appendix_titled_section at “Appendix: exact computation of the empirical quantile” · 64% of the source is main text. Read the extracted text to check this.

Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
1Zink, A. and Rose, S (2020) Fair regression for health care spending1.00083100%
2Chzhen, E., Denis, C., Hebiri, M., Oneto, L., and Pontil, M (2020) Fair regression with Wasserstein barycenters0.73732100%
3Berk, R., Heidari, H., Jabbari, S., Joseph, M., Kearns, M., Morgenst… (2017) A convex framework for fair regression0.69361100%
4Bertsimas, D. and Kallus, N (2020) From predictive to prescriptive analytics0.64422100%
5Bastani, H., Bayati, M., and Khosravi, K (2021) Mostly exploration-free algorithms for contextual bandits0.51121100%
6Joseph, M., Kearns, M., Morgenstern, J. H., and Roth, A (2016) Fairness in learning: Classic and contextual bandits0.51121100%
7Wightman, L. F (1998) LSAC National Longitudinal Bar Passage Study0.51121100%
8Anderson, D., Bjarnadóttir, M. V., Dezso, C. L., and Ross, D. G (2019) On a firm's optimal response to pressure for gender pay equity0.40511100%
9Bastani, H. and Bayati, M (2020) Online decision making with high-dimensional covariates0.40511100%
10del Barrio, E., Gordaliza, P., and Loubes, J.-M (2020) Review of mathematical frameworks for fairness in machine learning0.40511100%

Showing the top 10 of 80 scored citations.

Cited by, within the corpus

arXiv econ.EM papers that cite this one, ranked by how heavily they lean on it.

Citing paperIntensityMentionsSections
1Individual and group fairness in geographical partitioning0.84333