Information and discrimination in the rental housing market: evidence from a field experiment

M. Angeles Carnero, Lidia Farre and Mariano Bosch

Working Papers. Serie AD from Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie)

Abstract: This paper investigates the effect of disclosing information on the discriminatory behaviour against immigrants in the Spanish rental market. We conduct a field experiment where emails are sent showing interest on vacant rental apartments. Fictitious applicants whose names represent different ethnic groups send emails with different amount of information about their ability to pay the rent. Our results show that applicants with a Moroccan sounding name are 15 percentage points less likely to be contacted by the property owner than those with a Spanish name. We also find that revealing positive information about the socioeconomic status of the Moroccan candidate increases the probability of being contacted by 8 percentage points. However, the information revealed does not completely eliminate discriminatory behavior, suggesting the presence of negative attitudes towards immigrants.

Keywords: Discrimination; migration; rental market; field experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2009-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-mig and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Published by Ivie

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http://www.ivie.es/downloads/docs/wpasad/wpasad-2009-21.pdf Fisrt version / Primera version, 2009 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Information and discrimination in the rental housing market: Evidence from a field experiment (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ivi:wpasad:2009-21

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