Age Discrimination
An ADEA claim of discrimination in terminations was filed against a major telecommunications company by former employees. Plaintiffs alleged that the company over selected older workers for termination in a reduction-in-force, (“RIF”). It has long been observed in the Courts that age as a protected trait differs from other, immutable traits such as race or gender. Age changes over time, creating special issues from a statistical perspective. These analytical issues had not been properly addressed in such cases previously. Resolution Economics consulted the applicable labor economics literature and developed an innovative statistical model to study the relationship between layoff and age that took into account these special issues. Modeled correctly, we found that the strong correlation between age and layoff that existed when using the conventional statistical approach was misleading – studied correctly, and with reference to labor economics principles, this correlation was shown to be spurious. There was no statistical evidence that the company took age into account in implementing its RIF. The result was a highly advantageous settlement for the company.

Gender Discrimination
A Title VII claim of gender discrimination was filed against a large retail chain. The primary claim of plaintiffs was that the company failed to promote women in adequate numbers to Assistant and General Store Manager jobs. In order to test plaintiffs’ claims, Resolution Economics consulted the labor economics literature in order to develop the appropriate economic hypotheses, which permitted us to then develop the correct statistical approach to the problem. To carry out the statistical work, we had to convert information contained in paper records into electronic form, which were then merged with existing electronic data. Taking careful account of the economic principles involved, Resolution Economics found that the statistical results were not consistent with claims that women were under promoted at the company due to their gender.

Race Discrimination
A Title VII claim of racial discrimination was filed by the EEOC against a high-end hotel. The claim brought by the EEOC was that racial minorities were not recruited, hired, or placed into hotel jobs in the appropriate numbers. We began our work by studying the economic and business goals of the hotel. The labor market the hotel drew from was explicitly tied to their business strategy – in fact their business plan made reference to their approach to the labor market. What was notable and important for the statistical analysis was that their labor market strategy was unconventional. The labor market they drew upon was different in both skill and racial composition when compared to the typical hotel workers labor market. Resolution Economics created an applicant database from diverse paper documents, and utilized electronic company records as well as publicly available data. Defining the relevant labor market correctly, the statistical results demonstrated that the applicants the company recruited were racially representative of the labor market from which they came. Further, the company was shown to have hired and placed workers from their applicant pool in a racially neutral manner. The result was that the EEOC dropped the systemic charge against the company.

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