Labor Market Discrimination in Delhi : Evidence from a Field Experiment

We study the role of caste and religion in India's new economy sectors--software and call-centers--by sending 3,160 fictitious resumes in response to 371 job openings in and around Delhi (India) that were advertised in major city papers and online job sites. We randomly allocate caste-linked su...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors:	Banerjee, Abhijit, Bertrand, Marianne, Datta, Saugato, Mullainathan, Sendhil
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	EN
Published:	2012
Subjects:	Labor Discrimination J710 Economic Development: Human Resources Human Development Income Distribution Migration O150
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/4984

id	okr-10986-4984
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-49842021-04-23T14:02:20Z Labor Market Discrimination in Delhi : Evidence from a Field Experiment Banerjee, Abhijit Bertrand, Marianne Datta, Saugato Mullainathan, Sendhil Labor Discrimination J710 Economic Development: Human Resources Human Development Income Distribution Migration O150 We study the role of caste and religion in India's new economy sectors--software and call-centers--by sending 3,160 fictitious resumes in response to 371 job openings in and around Delhi (India) that were advertised in major city papers and online job sites. We randomly allocate caste-linked surnames across resumes in order to isolate the effect of caste on applicants' job-search outcomes. We find no evidence of discrimination against non-upper-caste (i.e., Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, and Other Backward Caste) applicants for software jobs. We do find large and significant differences between callback rates for upper-castes and Other Backward Castes (and to a lesser extent Scheduled Castes) in the case of call-center jobs. There is no evidence of discrimination against Muslims for either of the two kinds of jobs we apply for. Overall, the evidence suggests that applicants' caste identities do not significantly affect the callback decisions of firms. 2012-03-30T07:30:42Z 2012-03-30T07:30:42Z 2009 Journal Article Journal of Comparative Economics 01475967 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/4984 EN http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank Journal Article India
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	EN
topic	Labor Discrimination J710 Economic Development: Human Resources Human Development Income Distribution Migration O150
spellingShingle	Labor Discrimination J710 Economic Development: Human Resources Human Development Income Distribution Migration O150 Banerjee, Abhijit Bertrand, Marianne Datta, Saugato Mullainathan, Sendhil Labor Market Discrimination in Delhi : Evidence from a Field Experiment
geographic_facet	India
relation	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo
description	We study the role of caste and religion in India's new economy sectors--software and call-centers--by sending 3,160 fictitious resumes in response to 371 job openings in and around Delhi (India) that were advertised in major city papers and online job sites. We randomly allocate caste-linked surnames across resumes in order to isolate the effect of caste on applicants' job-search outcomes. We find no evidence of discrimination against non-upper-caste (i.e., Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, and Other Backward Caste) applicants for software jobs. We do find large and significant differences between callback rates for upper-castes and Other Backward Castes (and to a lesser extent Scheduled Castes) in the case of call-center jobs. There is no evidence of discrimination against Muslims for either of the two kinds of jobs we apply for. Overall, the evidence suggests that applicants' caste identities do not significantly affect the callback decisions of firms.
format	Journal Article
author	Banerjee, Abhijit Bertrand, Marianne Datta, Saugato Mullainathan, Sendhil
author_facet	Banerjee, Abhijit Bertrand, Marianne Datta, Saugato Mullainathan, Sendhil
author_sort	Banerjee, Abhijit
title	Labor Market Discrimination in Delhi : Evidence from a Field Experiment
title_short	Labor Market Discrimination in Delhi : Evidence from a Field Experiment
title_full	Labor Market Discrimination in Delhi : Evidence from a Field Experiment
title_fullStr	Labor Market Discrimination in Delhi : Evidence from a Field Experiment
title_full_unstemmed	Labor Market Discrimination in Delhi : Evidence from a Field Experiment
title_sort	labor market discrimination in delhi : evidence from a field experiment
publishDate	2012
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/4984
_version_	1764393494151954432

Labor Market Discrimination in Delhi : Evidence from a Field Experiment

Similar Items