Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E S Getting Grey Hairs in the Labour ABSTRACT Getting Grey Hairs in the Labour Market: An Alternative Experiment on Age DiscriminationThis study presents a new field experimental approach for measuring age discrimination in hiring. In addition to the classical approach in which candidates' ages are randomly assigned within pairs of fictitious resumes that are sent to real vacancies, we randomly assign activities undertaken by the older candidates during their additional life years between these pairs. When applying this design to the Belgium case, we find that age discrimination is fundamentally heterogeneous by older candidates' career pattern. Older age affects call-back only (negatively) in case older candidates were inactive or employed in an out-of-field job during their additional post-educational years. NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARYWe measured age discrimination in the Belgian labour market. To this end, we sent out fictitious job applications, only differing in age, to real vacancies. We distinguished between older candidates who were (i) employed in an in-field job, (ii) employed in an out-of-field job or (iii) inactive during their additional post-educational years (in comparison to the younger fictitious candidates). We found that revealing an older age decreased the probability of getting invited to a job interview with 65.0% when revealing out-of-field employment and with 41.2% when revealing inactivity. On the other hand, older candidates with more in-field employment had the same hiring chances as their younger counterparts. JEL Classification:C90, C93, J14, J71

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