'Does Juan Carlos or Nelson get a larger discount? Discrimination in Spanish housing' (Nov 2018)

• Does Juan Carlos or Nelson Obtain a Larger Price Cut in the Spanish Housing Market?

• By Josep Maria Raya, Catia Nicodemo and Daniel McMillen. Published online on the Urban Affairs Review on 18 November 2018

• https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1078087418811081 (as of May 2020, it only has paid access)

• Abstract:

  • Using a unique dataset and a nonparametric decomposition, we determine whether immigrants with native names, immigrants with foreign names, and natives have different outcomes in Spain’s housing market.

  • Results suggest that immigrants with native names achieve greater discounts relative to immigrants with non-Spanish names. As a robustness check, we prove that this is not due to the country of birth.

  • We observe that most of the difference in price across immigrant groups remains unexplained, which may imply some form of discrimination (pure or statistical) against immigrants with non-native names.

• Keywords: Spain, discrimination, migration

Discrimination in accessing rental and property housing markets seems to be quite a widespread phenomenon. As researching it to get data can be quite labour intensive, journalists can take advantage of academic work already done on this subject.