Labor market discrimination in Delhi: Evidence from a field experiment

By Abhijit Banerjee, Marianne Bertrand, S. Datta, Sendhil Mullainathan. 2009

208 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We study the role of caste and religion in India's new economy sectors--software and call-centers--by sending 3160 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. Journal of Comparative Economics 37 (1) (2009) 14-27.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Sociology and Political Science, Economics & Operations Research

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Citations in the corpus

Re-imagining Algorithmic Fairness in India and Beyond (2021, background): “predictive policing in New Delhi [127], caste [202] and ethnicity [15] biases in job applications, call-center job callbacks [27], castebased wage-gaps [124], caste discrimination in agricultural loans decisions [116], and even in online matrimonial ads [157].”
Field experiments across the social sciences (2017, background): “Though much of this research is based in the United States, several studies examine discrimination in other countries, including Canada (Lauster & Easterbrook 2011), India (Banerjee et al. 2009), the Netherlands (Blommaert et al.”
Cultural proximity and loan outcomes (2017, unknown): “[4] Banerjee, Abhijit, Marianne Bertrand, Saugato Datta, and Sendhil Mullainathan, 2009, “Labor market discrimination in Delhi: Evidence from a field experiment,” Journal of Comparative Economics, 37(1), pages 14-27.”
Opportunities and Challenges for Artificial Intelligence in India (2018, background): “An exper-iment conducted some years back by Banerjee et al. (2009) found evidence of caste-based discrimination in call-centre job applications.”
The individual experience of unemployment. (2012, background): “In India, there was evidence of discrimination against Other Backwards Caste and Scheduled Caste applicants for jobs involving soft skills, but not for software jobs (Banerjee et al. 2009).”
A multidisciplinary survey on discrimination analysis (2013, background): “Rather than being an explanatory variable, prior knowledge has the effect of perpetuating the vicious cycle of discrimination described in Section 2.3.”
Caste and the Indian Economy (2019, background): “rG rO > ( rG rO )2 from inequalities (11) and (12), which implies, in turn, that rG rO < 1.”
Ethnic Discrimination in Germany’s Labour Market: A Field Experiment (2012, background): “Further, there are only few vacancies from East Germany since most large corporations have their headquarters in West Germany.”
Race and Marriage in the Labor Market: A Discrimination Correspondence Study in a Developing Country (2014, background): “In India, Banerjee et al. (2009) compare callback rates for Upper and Non-Upper caste names in software and call-center jobs.”
Field Experiments on Discrimination (2016, background): “Caste and religion Banerjee et al. (2009) study the role of caste and religion in India’s software and call-center sectors. They sent 3160 fictitious résumés with randomly allocated caste-linked surnames in response to 371 job openings in and around Delhi (India) that were advertised in major city p”
Hiring Discrimination: An Overview of (Almost) All Correspondence Experiments Since 2005 (2017, background): “African, Caribbean, Indian, or Pakistani (versus native) name UK Wood et al. (2009) - A.5.”