Labor Market Discrimination in Lima, Peru: Evidence from a Field Experiment

Abstract

Latin America is seen as a highly discriminatory society. However, such a common belief appears not to be based on strong empirical evidence (Chong and Ñopo, 2007). This paper exploits novel experimental data gathered to identify the existence of discrimination in the labor market of Lima, Peru, a fast-growing country where much anecdotal evidence suggests the presence of discriminatory practices at many instances of daily life. Focusing on two dimensions, sex (female/male) and surnames (indigenous/white), we sent 4,820 fictitious and equivalent CVs in response to 1,205 real job vacancies advertised in an important Peruvian newspaper. We randomly allocated indigenous and white surnames across CVs sent in application to professional, technical, and unskilled jobs. Overall, we find that males receive 20 percent more callbacks than females, and whites receive 80 percent more calls than indigenous applicants. Within job categories, we find sexual discrimination only in unskilled jobs, while discrimination against indigenous is verified across all job categories. There are no statistically significant differences in the time to receive a phone call among male/female, and white/indigenous applicants.

Triple Penalty in Employment Access: The Role of Beauty, Race, and Sex

“…In that sense, our study builds upon the work by Galarza and Yamada (2012), and expands the analysis by López et al (2013) and Ruffle and Shtudiner (2010). Our results provide novel information about the extent of discrimination that can be attributed to each of the three dimensions mentioned earlier.…”

“…However, such an ideal result this does not always hold in reality, as reported by Galarza and Yamada (2012) for the case of Lima. Using an experimental methodology, the authors found that a white person receives almost twice as many callbacks as a Quechua person with similar human capital, and that male candidates are preferred to females.…”

“…As for the experimental studies on labor discrimination, the reader is referred to review Galarza and Yamada (2012). For our purposes, it suffices to mention that Bertrand and Mullainathan (2004) is the most cited article in the economics literature.…”

Do employers in Myanmar prefer workers who accumulated skills in more advanced countries? Evidence from a field experiment

“…The results suggest that randomization was successful. Table 2 lists callback statistics and shows that the average callback rate is 22%, which is significantly higher than 3-10% found in prior studies (e.g., Bertrand and Mullainathan 2004;Kroft et al 2013;Lahey 2008;Oreopoulos 2011;Galarza and Yamada 2014). About 72% of employers did not call back any applicants, 13% call back one of the two applicants, and 15% call back both applicants.…”

“…Second, it helps better understand heterogeneous effects by occupation, employer, and foreign country where experience was accumulated. It also contributes to a growing list of labor market audit studies conducted in developing country settings (e.g., Galarza and Yamada 2014;Banerjee et al 2009;Bóo et al 2013).…”