Labor market discrimination in Delhi: Evidence from a field experiment

Abhijit Banerjee, Marianne Bertrand, Saugato Datta and Sendhil Mullainathan

Journal of Comparative Economics, 2009, vol. 37, issue 1, 14-27

Abstract: We study the role of caste and religion in India's new economy sectors--software and call-centers--by sending 3160 fictitious resumes in response to 371 job openings in and around Delhi (India) that were advertised in major city papers and online job sites. We randomly allocate caste-linked surnames across resumes in order to isolate the effect of caste on applicants' job-search outcomes. We find no evidence of discrimination against non-upper-caste (i.e. Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, and Other Backward Caste) applicants for software jobs. We do find large and significant differences between callback rates for upper-castes and Other Backward Castes (and to a lesser extent Scheduled Castes) in the case of call-center jobs. There is no evidence of discrimination against Muslims for either of the two kinds of jobs we apply for. Overall, the evidence suggests that applicants' caste identities do not significantly affect the callback decisions of firms. Journal of Comparative Economics 37 (1) (2009) 14-27.

Keywords: Discrimination; Caste; India; Hiring; Field; experiment; Resume; audit (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (92)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0147-5967(08)00067-X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jcecon:v:37:y:2009:i:1:p:14-27

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Comparative Economics is currently edited by D. Berkowitz and G. Roland

More articles in Journal of Comparative Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().