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Disability Discrimination in the Italian Rental Housing Market: A Field Experiment with Blind Tenants

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  • Luca Fumarco

Abstract

I test discrimination against blind tenants assisted by guide dogs in the Italian rental housing market by using fake application letters. I compare three fictitious household tenants: married couples, married couples where the wife is blind and owns a guide dog, and married couples where the normal-sighted wife owns a normal dog. I find that the households with a blind wife are invited less often to visit apartments they applied for, because of the presence of their guide dog; using the language of Italian and E.U. laws, this behavior is called indirect discrimination against disabled people. This result is robust.

Suggested Citation

  • Luca Fumarco, 2017. "Disability Discrimination in the Italian Rental Housing Market: A Field Experiment with Blind Tenants," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 93(4), pages 567-584.
    • Handle: RePEc:uwp:landec:v:93:y:2017:i:4:p:567-584
    Note: DOI: 10.3368/le.93.4.567
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    Cited by:

    1. Ahmed, Ali & Hammarstedt, Mats & Karlsson, Karl, 2020. "Do Swedish schools discriminate against children with disabilities?," GLO Discussion Paper Series 529, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    2. Fumarco, Luca & Gaddis, S. Michael & Sarracino, Francesco & Snoddy, I., 2023. "Sendemails: An Automated Email Package with Multiple Applications," IZA Discussion Papers 16163, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Luca Fumarco & S. Michael Gaddis & Iain Snoddy, 2021. "Winmail3: An automated email package with an application to correspondence audit tests," Working Papers 2110, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    4. Sylvain Chareyron & Yannick L'Horty & Philomène Mbaye & Pascale Petit, 2022. "Impacts of quota policy and employer obligation to adapt workstations on discrimination against people with disabilities: Lessons from an experiment," TEPP Working Paper 2022-17, TEPP.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • R21 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Housing Demand

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