Labor Market Discrimination Based on Gender and the Place of Residence: A Randomized Experiment in Argentina

31 Pages Posted: 14 Mar 2011 Last revised: 24 Mar 2015

See all articles by Iva Trako

Iva Trako

Paris School of Economics (PSE); World Bank

Florencia López Bóo

Inter-American Development Bank (IDB); Young Lives, Department of International Development, University of Oxford; IZA

Date Written: November 3, 2010

Abstract

This papers studies the presence of discrimination in terms of gender and socioeconomic level of the place of residence in Argentina. In order to assess the existence of discrimination in these dimensions, we submitted approximately 2700 fictitious Curriculum Vitae (CV) for real job vacancies published daily in an important Argentine job-search website. A set of realistic and representative resumes without effectively using resumes that belong to actual job seekers, which were equivalent in terms of qualifications and employment experience were sent out, varying the gender and residential area. We estimated a binary choice model to identify differences in callbacks depending on gender and socioeconomic level of the place of residence. A simple descriptive analysis of our data and also our formal econometric estimations do not suggest evidence of discrimination based on gender. However, our results do suggest evidence of discrimination in terms of socioeconomic level of the place of residence which seems to be important in magnitude.

Keywords: place of residence, call back rates, labor market discrimination

JEL Classification: J71

Suggested Citation

Trako, Iva and López Bóo, Florencia, Labor Market Discrimination Based on Gender and the Place of Residence: A Randomized Experiment in Argentina (November 3, 2010). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1784985 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1784985

Iva Trako (Contact Author)

Paris School of Economics (PSE) ( email )

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France

World Bank ( email )

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Florencia López Bóo

Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) ( email )

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United States

Young Lives, Department of International Development, University of Oxford ( email )

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Oxford, OX1 3TB
United Kingdom

IZA ( email )

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Bonn, D-53072
Germany

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