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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

In this study, I show that with the appropriate experimental strategy, a correspondence test can be adapted to investigate disability discrimination in the rental housing market. I focus on discrimination against blind tenants assisted by guide dogs in Italy and obtain very robust results. The utilization of three fictitious household tenants (that is, a married couple, a married couple with a blind wife who owns a guide dog, and a married couple where the wife is normal sighted and owns a pet dog) allows me to investigate whether discrimination is due to the blindness or to guide dog alone. I find that apartment owners discriminate blind tenants because of the presence of the guide dog alone. According to the Italian law, this is indirect discrimination, which in the US corresponds to the refusal to provide reasonable accommodation.

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  • Luca Fumarco, 2015. "Disability Discrimination in the Italian Rental Housing Market: A Field Experiment with Blind Tenants," Natural Field Experiments 00619, The Field Experiments Website.
    • Handle: RePEc:feb:natura:00619
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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. Luca Fumarco & S. Michael Gaddis & Francesco Sarracino & Iain Snoddy, 2024. "sendemails: An automated email package with multiple applications," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 24(1), pages 138-160, March.
    3. 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.
    4. 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.

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    JEL classification:

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

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