Is it About Where You Are From or How Well You Fit the Job? A Laboratory Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination Towards Venezuelan Immigrants in Colombia

Mariana Blanco, Darwin Cortés, Nazly López-Peña and Gabriela Triviño
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Mariana Blanco: Università di Torino and Collegio Carlo Alberto, Italia.
Darwin Cortés: Universidad del Rosario
Nazly López-Peña: Universidad del Rosario
Gabriela Triviño: Universidad del Rosario

No 2026-33, Documentos CEDE from Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE

Abstract: Colombia has become the main destination for Venezuelan immigrants, triggering a significant labor supply shock. The country’s labor market has faced mounting pressures since then, raising concerns about labor discrimination. Using a Incentivized Resume Rating (IRR), combined with an incentivized betting mechanism, we explore: (1) whether participants are more or less likely to recommend Venezuelan candidates for a job vacancy than their equally qualified Colombian counterparts, and (2) whether they anticipate bias from their peers even in the absence of own discrimination. We find evidence of positive discrimination in favor of Venezuelan candidates both when participants make individual recommendations and when they predict their peers’ preferences. However, conditional on selection, we find wage discrimination against Venezuelan workers, particularly in high-skill occupations, where assigned wages are approximately 8–14% lower. Finally, there is no evidence of taste-based discrimination: participants tend to identify the better-performing candidate correctly, and neither risk preferences nor discriminatory attitudes predict their choices. These results reveal a segmented labor market treatment of Venezuelan migrants, favored at the hiring stage but penalized at the wage-setting stage, with important implications for immigration and labor policy in Colombia and other migrant-receiving economies in Latin America.

Keywords: Labor market discrimination; Venezuelan immigrants; Lab experiment; incentivized resume rating; social norms; Colombia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 F22 J15 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41
Date: 2026-06
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Published in Documentos CEDE - Universidad de los Andes

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