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Are the Religiously Observant Discriminated Against in the Rental Housing Market? Experimental Evidence from Israel

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  • Sansani, Shahar

Abstract

In this paper, I test for discrimination against the religiously observant in the Israeli rental housing market. I perform a correspondence study where half of the requests have a religious signal (‘basad’ written at the top of the request), while the other half do not. Because the requests are identical otherwise, differences in call-back rates represent the causal effect of writing ‘basad’ at the top of the request. I find that requests with a religious signal receive 12 percent less responses than requests with no such signal, with this differential being greater in cities with more left-leaning voters and when the contact person is female. For comparison, requests signaling individuals from the Former Soviet Union receive about the same percentage of call-backs as religious requests, while requests signaling an Arab individual receive significantly fewer call-backs than the other groups.

Suggested Citation

  • Sansani, Shahar, 2017. "Are the Religiously Observant Discriminated Against in the Rental Housing Market? Experimental Evidence from Israel," MPRA Paper 81424, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:81424
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Souleymane Mbaye, 2019. "Trois évaluations d’actions de lutte contre les discriminations," Erudite Ph.D Dissertations, Erudite, number ph19-01 edited by Pascale Petit, February.
    2. Flage, Alexandre, 2018. "Ethnic and gender discrimination in the rental housing market: Evidence from a meta-analysis of correspondence tests, 2006–2017," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 251-273.
    3. Alexandre Flage, 2018. "Ethnic and Gender Discrimination in Rental Housing Market, Evidence from Meta-Analysis of Correspondence Tests, 2006-2017," Working Papers 2018-04, CRESE.
    4. Shahar Sansani, 2018. "Are there economic benefits to being polite? Experimental evidence from the Israeli rental housing market," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 38(1), pages 565-573.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Discrimination; religiosity; housing; correspondence study;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • Z12 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Religion

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