Patrick Button
Associate Professor and Executive Director, Connolly Alexander Institute for Data Science
Biography
Patrick Button (they/he) primarily researches discrimination, focusing especially on age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, race, and ethnicity. While most of their research focuses on hiring discrimination, Button also researches discrimination in access to credit, housing, and education.
Button measures discrimination in markets using audit correspondence field experiments – a type of randomized control trial - that tests if on-average identical individuals, who differ based on race, age, or other factors, face different access to markets. For example, Button shows that equally-qualified (or more qualified) older job applicants, especially women, face lower interview rates than their younger peers. Button also studies how discrimination laws, such as the Civil Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, and their state law counterparts, affect discrimination.
Button also researches how recessions impact workers, focusing especially on older workers, finding that while the Great Recession hurt younger and middle-aged workers relatively more, the COVID-19 recession was the most harmful for older workers, especially older women.
Button’s research also (lack of) economic impacts of tax incentives for the film industry by comparing filming location choice, employment, and business growth in the film industry and related industries after states adopted these aggressive subsidies.
As the Executive Director of the Connolly Alexander Institute for Data Science, Button works to support data science research on campus and promote data and AI literacy, with a focus on providing students from all backgrounds with hands-on data skills.
Education
University of California, Irvine
University of Toronto
University of Regina
Links
Articles
The Illusion of Fairness: Auditing Fairness Interventions in Algorithmic Hiring with Audit Studies
2026
Classifiers trained on historical data are deployed in the real world to automate decisions from hiring to loan issuance. Judging the fairness and efficiency of these systems, and their human counterparts, is a complex and important topic studied across both computational and social sciences. One common way to address bias in classifiers is to resample the training data to offset distributional disparities. In the hiring domain, where results may vary by a protected class, many interventions from the literature equalize the hiring rate within the training set to alleviate bias. While simple and seemingly effective, these methods have typically only been evaluated using data obtained through convenience samples, e.g., data from a real-world hiring process, introducing selection and label bias. In the social and health sciences, audit studies, in which fictitious "testers" (resumes) are sent to subjects (job openings) in a randomized control trial, provide high-quality data that support rigorous estimates of discrimination by controlling for confounding factors. We investigate how data from audit studies can be used to improve our ability to both train and evaluate automated hiring algorithms. Specifically, we use data from a large audit study of age discrimination in hiring to test common resampling methods from the fair machine learning literature. We find that audit data of real-world hiring reveals cases where equalizing base rates across classes appears to achieve parity using traditional measures, but in fact has an absolute ~10% disparity when measured appropriately. We also show that corrections based on individual treatment effect estimation methods combined with audit study data can overcome these issues, underscoring the need for rigorous data collection in fairness research.
Employment Discrimination against Indigenous Peoples in the United States: Evidence from a Field Experiment
2019
We conducted a resume correspondence experiment to measure discrimination in hiring faced by Indigenous Peoples in the United States (Native Americans, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians). We sent employers realistic resumes for common jobs (retail sales, kitchen staff, server, janitor, and security) in 11 cities and compared interview offer rates. We signaled Indigenous status in one of four different ways. Based on 13,516 applications, we do not find hiring discrimination in any context. These findings hold after numerous robustness checks, although our checks and discussions raise multiple concerns that are relevant to audit studies generally.
Can tax incentives create a local film industry? Evidence from Louisiana and New Mexico
2018
State film incentives (SFIs) are a recent and popular economic development incentive. I study these through case studies of two prominent SFIs—those in Louisiana and New Mexico—using the synthetic control case study method. This allows me to estimate the effect of SFIs relative to “business as usual”: what would have happened without SFIs. I estimate the effects of these SFIs on filming location, using databases from IMDb and Studio System, and on business establishments and employment in the motion picture production industry using the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages.
Is it Harder for Older Workers to Find Jobs? New and Improved Evidence from a Field Experiment
2018
We design and implement a large-scale field experiment – a resume correspondence study – to address a number of potential limitations of existing field experiments testing for age discrimination, which may bias their results. One limitation that may bias these studies towards finding discrimination is the practice of giving older and younger applicants similar experience in the job to which they are applying, making them “otherwise comparable.” The second limitation arises because greater unobserved differences in human capital investment of older applicants may bias existing field experiments against finding age discrimination. We also study ages closer to retirement than in past studies, and use a richer set of job profiles for older workers to test for differences associated with transitions to less demanding jobs (“bridge jobs”) at older ages. Based on evidence from over 40,000 job applications, we find robust evidence of age discrimination in hiring against older women, especially those near retirement age. But we find that there is considerably less evidence of age discrimination against men after correcting for the potential biases this study addresses.
Disability Saliency and Discrimination in Hiring
2018
Theory suggests that disability discrimination protections may adversely affect the hiring of individuals with disabilities by making them more expensive. Using SIPP data, we explore how the ADA Amendments Act (ADAAA), which expanded disability discrimination protections, affected the relative hiring rate of individuals with disabilities. We employ new categorizations of disability type: salient physical conditions, non-salient physical conditions, mental retardation and developmental disability, and other mental conditions.
Population Aging, Age Discrimination, and Age Discrimination Protections at 50th Anniversary of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act
2018
This chapter discusses population aging, increased participation of seniors in the labor force in the United States (and reasons for this), and how these trends are making the struggles of older workers in the labor market increasingly policy relevant. Evidence examining if age discrimination is a barrier for seniors as they try to increase their work lives through the common practice of “bridge” jobs is also presented. After discussing the evidence that measures age discrimination, economics and legal research that seeks to determine to what extent the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act and state-level age discrimination laws prevent age discrimination is discussed.
Expanding Employment Discrimination Protections for Individuals with Disabilities: Evidence from California
2017
Effective 2001, California passed the Prudence Kay Poppink Act, which broadened California’s disability employment discrimination law to cover individuals with less-severe disabilities by lowering the burden of proof to establish a disability. Using both difference-in-differences and difference-in-difference-in-differences regression analyses and data from the Current Population Survey, the author estimates how this act affected the labor market outcomes for individuals with disabilities. The results suggest that the act significantly increased employment for individuals with disabilities, with the effect persisting at least partially up to six years later.
Experimental Age Discrimination Evidence and the Heckman Critique
2016
We design and implement a large-scale field experiment on age discrimination to address limitations of past research that may bias their results. One limitation is the practice of giving older and younger applicants similar experience in the job to which they are applying, to make them "otherwise comparable." The second limitation is ignoring the likelihood of greater variation in unobserved differences among older workers owing to human capital investment. Based on evidence from over 40,000 job applications, we find robust evidence of age discrimination in hiring against older women, but considerably less evidence of age discrimination against older men.
Does Protecting Older Workers From Discrimination Make It Harder to Get Hired? Evidence From Disability Discrimination Laws
2016
We explore the effects of disability discrimination laws on hiring of older workers. A concern with antidiscrimination laws is that they may reduce hiring by raising the cost of terminations and—in the specific case of disability discrimination laws—raising the cost of employment because of the need to accommodate disabled workers. Moreover, disability discrimination laws can affect nondisabled older workers because they are fairly likely to develop work-related disabilities, but are generally not protected by these laws. Using state variation in disability discrimination protections, we find little or no evidence that stronger disability discrimination laws lower the hiring of nondisabled older workers. We similarly find no evidence of adverse effects of disability discrimination laws on hiring of disabled older workers.
Model Uncertainty and Model Averaging in Regression Discontinuity Designs
2015
Parametric (polynomial) models are popular in research employing regression discontinuity designs and are required when data are discrete. However, researchers often choose a parametric model based on data inspection or pretesting. These approaches lead to standard errors and confidence intervals that are too small because they do not incorporate model uncertainty. I propose using Frequentist model averaging to incorporate model uncertainty into parametric models. My Monte Carlo experiments show that Frequentist model averaging leads to mean square error and coverage probability improvements over pretesting.
Did age discrimination protections help older workers weather the great recession?
2014
We examine whether stronger age discrimination laws at the state level moderated the impact of the Great Recession on older workers. We use a difference‐in‐difference‐in‐differences strategy to compare older and younger workers, in states with stronger and weaker laws, before, during, and after the Great Recession. We find very little evidence that stronger age discrimination protections helped older workers weather the Great Recession, relative to younger workers. The evidence sometimes points in the opposite direction, with stronger state age discrimination protections associated with more adverse effects of the Great Recession on older workers. We suggest that during an experience such as the Great Recession, severe labor market disruptions make it difficult to discern discrimination, weakening the effects of stronger state age discrimination protections. Alternatively, higher termination costs associated with stronger age discrimination protections may do more to deter hiring when future product and labor demand is highly uncertain.
Media Appearances
One big question: What have been Louisiana’s best, worst economic development incentives?
Patrick Button, Tulane University economics professor; Connolly Alexander Institute for Data Science executive director
One type of incentive that tends to work well is one that's very targeted. It could be targeted toward some kind of barrier to being able to enter a market — that could be that you aren't able to come up with a capital financing, or you're a small business and you're trying to manage the paperwork process, anything that can help with some of those barriers can allow people to enter a market when they otherwise wouldn’t be able to.
Why aren't filmmakers shooting in LA?
Patrick Button is an economist at Tulane University who wrote their dissertation on film tax incentives. Patrick says that in the early 2000s, state governments started vying for a piece of that Hollywood economic sparkle, and they did this by subsidies for film and TV production.
Federal job cuts prompt concerns about the unemployment rate & consumer spending
“So when people lose their jobs, it really affects the local economy,” said Patrick Button, a Tulane University economics professor. “It’s going to impact consumer spending and what’s going on right now. It’s also creating a lot of gunk in the system too.”
Will Louisiana’s Film Tax Credit Survive? Inside the Debate Over Tax Reform & Its Impact on Local Productions
“Louisiana certainly has a dynamic film industry but, according to two of my studies, and those of several other economists, tax incentives have little impact,” says Dr. Patrick J. Button, associate professor economics at Tulane and the executive director of The Connelly Alexander Institute for Data Science.
Business Insider: The retirement Catch-22
Patrick Button, a professor of economics at Tulane University, has done extensive work on employment discrimination, mostly through what's known as résumé correspondence field experiments.
States Have Spent $25 Billion to Woo Hollywood. Is It Worth It?
“A math trick to pull the wool over the eyes of Michiganders,” said Patrick Button, an associate professor of economics at Tulane University who has published studies on film incentives.
Businesses feeling the pressure with multiple job openings but no workers
“Anytime that we have a mismatch between available workers and available jobs, that can create friction in the economy,” said Tulane University associate professor of economics Patrick Button.
How does age discrimination affect the economy?
Patrick Button, an assistant professor of economics at Tulane University, said older people who face discrimination tend to retire early, which leads to people drawing from Social Security earlier or applying for Social Security Disability Insurance.
The first millennials turn 40 on Jan. 1. That’s old enough to sue for age discrimination.
“Most people aren’t going to face age discrimination at 40, but there will be some women who will be facing age discrimination by then,” said Tulane University economist Patrick Button, an expert on the ADEA and its effects.
If you weren't raised in the Internet age, you may need to worry about workplace age discrimination
And legal protections against age discrimination tend to skew more toward men. “Evidence suggests laws help older men more than older women,” said Patrick Button, one of the authors of the study and an assistant professor at Tulane University.
Women over 50? Help not wanted
Video: Women over 50? Help Not Wanted.
Here's Proof That Age Discrimination Is Widespread in the Job Market
And the older you are, the more discrimination you face, according to the authors of a National Bureau of Economic Research study out Monday.
Why age discrimination is worse for women
But study authors David Neumark and Ian Burn of the University of California at Irvine and Patrick Button of Tulane University thought that the way in which hiring discrimination is usually detected — through dummy résumés sent out in response to real job postings — might have been flawed, because they test responses to older and younger applicants with "commensurate experience." Even a rational hiring manager might have doubts about a 50-year-old who has the same number and type of jobs on his or her résumé as a 25-year-old, after all.
Anti-Discrimination Laws Didn’t Help Older Men Get Back to Work
“These results provide very little evidence that stronger state age discrimination protections helped older workers weather the Great Recession,” wrote David Neumark and Patrick Button. “In fact, the opposite may have occurred, with older workers bearing more of the brunt of the Great Recession in states with stronger age discrimination protections.”
Mr. Neumark, director of the Center for Economics & Public Policy at the University of California, Irvine, and Mr. Button, a doctoral candidate at the university, studied data on duration of unemployment spells during and after the 2007-09 recession.
In the News
MSN: Help wanted: Companies that can write job ads that don’t discriminate against workers over 50
Marketplace: Are companies more likely to fire older workers in mass layoffs?
Forbes: Unemployed But Too Young to Retire
WWL TV: Out of work due to COVID-19, she started working for herself — and she's not alone
Fox 8 Live: Now Hiring: Businesses continue to struggle with filling jobs as holidays near
WWL TV: Businesses feeling the pressure with multiple job openings but no workers
Tennessean: Is raising the minimum wage enough to address the racial wealth gap for service workers?
Marketplace: How does age discrimination affect the economy?
Wallet Hub: States Whose Unemployment Claims Are Recovering the Quickest