Discrimination against Immigrants in the Spanish

Rental Market. Evidence from Field Experiments

Mariano Bosch M. Angeles Carnero Lídia Farré

January 29, 2009

Abstract

This paper quanti…es and investigates the sources of discrimination against

immigrants in the Spanish rental market. Two …eld experiments are conducted.
The …rst one is an audit study where matched pairs of auditors, one Spaniard
and another one with a markedly foreign accent, make phone calls in response
to internet ads to arrange an invitation for a ‡at showing. By comparing
invitations received by the two groups we conclude that immigrants have a
10% less chances of being invited to a ‡at showing than natives. The second
experiment is a correspondence test where emails are sent to vacant rental
apartments. Three di¤erent emails are sent: one from a native with detailed
information about his/her employment and occupational situation; a second
from a foreigner disclosing similar information; and a third one from a foreigner
without any information other than the name. Preliminary results indicate that
disclosing information slightly increases the probability of being invited to a
‡at showing, and that negative attitudes against immigrants, specially against
males, seems to be an important source of discrimination.
JEL: J15, R23, C93
Keywords: Discrimination, Migration, Rental Market, Field Experiment

Corresponding Author. Dpt. Fundamentos del Análisis Económico, Universidad de Alicante.

Campus de S. Vicente del Raspeig, 03690, Alicante, Spain. Tel: 34 965903400 (ext. 3224), Fax: 34
965903898. E-mail: lidiafarre@ua.es

1
1 Introduction

Since the mid 1990’s Spain has absorbed more than 3 million immigrants: the fraction
of the population born abroad has shifted from about 1% in 1995 to more than 11%
in 2008. Researchers have investigated the response of natives to the massive arrival
of immigrants. The existing literature mainly focuses on the impact of the large ‡ow
of foreign-born workers on the labor market outcomes of natives, and …nds small, and
often statistically insigni…cant, e¤ects (Amuedo-Dorantes and De la Rica, 2008 and
González and Ortega, 2007).
Much less attention has received the performance of immigrants in the receiv-
ing country. Upon arrival most immigrants initiate two hazardous search processes:
‡at and job hunting. Evidence from other countries, mainly from the US, reveals
that immigrants face a substantial amount of discrimination both in the labor and
the housing market.1 Discrimination in the housing market may substantially and
negatively a¤ect the integration of immigrants in the society, and thus the economic
opportunities of the newcomers. For example, if immigrants are reduced to search for
housing in less attractive neighborhoods, they will bene…t from poorer social facilities
(i.e. schools and hospitals) and access less attractive jobs.
This paper conducts two …eld experiments to quantify and understand the sources
of discrimination against immigrants in the Spanish rental housing market. The …rst
experiment is an audit study where matched pairs of auditors, one native and another
with a strong foreign accent, make phone calls in response to ads published in the in-
ternet advertising vacant ‡ats. The second experiment is a correspondence test where
1
See for instance Bertrand and Mullainathan (2004) for evidence of discrimination in the labor
market and Riach and Rich (2002) for discrimination in the housing market.

2
emails are sent in response to the ads. In this case landlords can infer the nationality
of the applicant from his/her name in the signature of the email. The presence of
discrimination is quanti…ed by comparing response rates among nationalities.
Most of the previous research on discrimination in the housing market is based on
audit studies. In this framework, auditors are trained to similarly behave and make
equivalent enquiries when speaking to prospective landlords or real state agents. The
evidence in these previous studies indicates that ethnic minorities are discriminated
as auditors from the minority group are o¤ered and shown fewer housing units than
their counterparts from the majority group (see Riach and Rich 2002, for a detailed
survey of previous studies in the US and Europe).
However, there are serious concerns about the validity of …eld experiments based
on personal approaches. Heckman and Siegelman (1993) and Heckman (1998) argue
that the idiosyncratic of the auditors and the e¤ect of unobservable characteristics
when approaching the potential landlord may a¤ect and bias the outcome of the study.
To overcome these problems audit studies have been replaced by experiments using
written applications. Bertrand and Mullainathan (2004) conduct such an experiment
to detect discrimination in the labor market. They sent two equivalent applications
to the same job vacancy where only the name di¤ered, one had a white sounding
name while the other had an African-American one. They …nd that applications
associated to white names receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews than those
with African-American sounding names. Their approach has been adapted to study
discrimination in the housing market. For example, Carpusor and Loges (2006) tested
for the presence of discrimination by making enquiries via email regarding available
apartments. They signaled ethnicity through names that sound as if they might be

3
Arabic, African-Americans or Europeans and found that applicants with Arab and
African-American sounding names received signi…cantly fewer call backs than the
white applicants. A similar study conducted by Ahmed and Hammarstedt (2008)
reveals that ethnic, as well as gender discrimination, exists in the Swedish rental
housing market.
While these previous studies provide clear evidence of discrimination in the hous-
ing market, they do not distinguish the causes behind the di¤erent treatment individ-
uals in minority groups received. Our experimental study goes one step further than
previous as it tries to pinpoint the source of discrimination against foreigners. This in-
formation is important as the policy design to …ght discrimination clearly depends on
its sources. One strategy the government can follow is to try to a¤ect public opinion
and people’s attitudes towards minorities. However this strategy would only work if
negative attitudes against foreigners are the source of discrimination. An alternative
strategy is to minimize uncertainty regarding the immigrants’repayment probability.
That would only be a successful strategy if uncertainty about the payback probability
of minorities was the only source of discrimination.
In this study we try to identify the sources behind the presence of discrimination
in the Spanish rental housing market. Our experiment is similar to that in Ahmed
and Hammarstedt (2008) as we send matched applications to each landlord. As them
we signal the ethnicity of the applicant by the name used in the email’s signature. The
present study however reveals di¤erent bits of information regarding the repayment
probability of each potential applicant. Comparisons of the call back rates condi-
tional on the applicant’s ethnicity and the amount of information revealed allows us
to quantify the degree of discrimination as well as its sources. The design of the

4
experiment, where names are used to signal the ethnicity of the applicant, reduces us
to conduct the email testing method using only Moroccan individuals.2 The corre-
sponding testing method to detect discrimination against Ecuadorians or other Latin
American immigrants is invalidated in the Spanish case due to the similarity between
native names and those of the minority group. The degree of discrimination against
Latinos is quanti…ed in the audit study where auditors make phone calls to the land-
lords. This experimental approach is subject to the criticisms of other audit studies
and it does not allow us to di¤erentiate the sources of discrimination, however it is
useful to obtain a ‡avor of the amount of discrimination that exists against di¤erent
minority groups.
Our preliminary results point to several traces of discrimination. First, Spaniards
receive on average 14 percent more invitations to visit the ‡at than immigrants. Sec-
ond, the e¤ect of discrimination is statistically signi…cant for foreign-born males but
only marginally signi…cant for their female counterparts. The largest level of dis-
crimination is found against Ecuadorian males, who have a 40 percent less chance
of getting an invitation. The results of the email testing method suggest that the
probability of getting a response email from the landlord increases when information
regarding the …nancial and employment situation of the applicant is reported, in par-
ticular for women. However a substantial degree of discrimination against individuals
with a Moroccan sounding name still remains after this information is revealed.
2
By nationality the dominant groups of immigrants to Spain come from Morocco (13.59%),
Ecuador (11.13%), Romania (9.82%) and Colombia (6.40%). Source: INE

5
2 Immigration and the Rental Market in Spain

One of the main reasons of why native population may be reluctant to rent properties
to inmigrants is their high default rate. The evidence on this is scarce in Spain.
However, this does not seem to be the case. About 800,000 housing units in Spain
are rented by immigrants, which represents about 40% of all the housing units that
were available for rent in Spain in 2007.3 Since 2001 the Registro de Arrendatorios
Morosos Sentenciados has registered more than 10,000 evictions for nonpayment of
rent. A recent study conducted by a private consulting …rm indicates that out of
10,000 evictions, 50.5% of the total correspond to males and 35.7% to females and
the rest to private …rms. By nationality, eviction of natives represents 74% of the
total, followed by British, Germans and Romanians, and the lowest rates are among
Moroccans, other Africans and Asians. Beraring in mind that 40% of all housing units
are rented to immigrants, the default rate does not seem to be higher for inmigrants,
if anything lower.
Despite the higher probability of repayment by immigrants, in particular those
from non-european countries, anecdotal evidence suggests that non-native have a
hard time in …nding housing. For example, the former Spanish Housing Minister
declared to Europa Press that: "Despite being a rare event in Spain, it is true that
some people provide 10,000 excuses when they learn that the potential tender is an
immigrant" (27/11/2007). Also, it is not unusual …nding ads in the rental sites
where immigrants are discouraged to inquire information. In these sites some ads
are accompanied by statements such as "Flat to rent, no immigrants" (El Mundo,
30/05/2008).
3
Source: Programa de Fomento del Alquiler Garantizado (PFAG)

6
 Table 1 displays some questions taken from the opinion polls of the World Value
Survey. In this survey individuals are asked some questions to infer their opinion
about various social issues. In 1995, 2000 and 2005 waves respondents are asked
some questions related to migration. From the table we can see that natives in Spain
are not particularly worried about having an immigrant or people from other races as
neighbors when compared to natives in other western countries. However, they seem
to be particularly worried about the massive arrival of foreign born workers as the
polls re‡ect an increasing willingness to strengthening immigration policies between
1995 and 2005.

3 The Experimental Design

To detect the presence of discrimination in the Spanish rental housing market we

conduct two di¤erent experiments. The …rst one is an audit study based on phone
calls to landlords advertising a rental housing unit. This …rst approach allows us
to quantify the degree of discrimination against di¤erent minority groups. To un-
derstand the reasons behind discrimination we perform a second experiment based
on a correspondence test. In this second experiment emails are sent in response va-
cant ‡ats ads. The emails disclose di¤erent information about the nationality and
socioeconomic situation of the applicant and this allows us to identify the sources of
discrimination.
In both experiments information about housing units for rent is obtained from one
of the most popular buy and sell sites in Spain, Loquo.com. Loquo is a network of local
online classi…eds and community websites, similar to Craigslist in the US. The main
categories are housing, goods for sale, community, personals, jobs, business services,

7
local events and community discussion forums. On Loquo.com people can place ads
to buy, sell or rent housing units. Landlords can advertise their properties at no costs.
Individuals interested in a particular item can call the landlord. Alternatively they
can also send him an email free of charge. The only information that one is required
to …ll in is the name, email address and a short message.
The Audit Study
The experiment based on phone calls was carried out in May and June 2008. We
selected a random sample of the advertised housing units in Loquo in three di¤er-
ent Spanish cities: Alicante, Barcelona and Madrid. We employed pairs of trained
auditors: one Spaniard and the other with a markedly foreign accent. We focus on
three of the largest non-European groups of immigrants in Spain: Ecuadorians, Mo-
roccans and Colombians. Auditors inquire about the ad and try to arrange a visit
to the property. To quantify the degree of discrimination we compare the number of
invitations to visit the housing unit received by natives and foreigners.
We employ paired-matched applications instead of randomly assigning one of the
applicants to each ad to eliminate unobserved landlord individual …xed e¤ects. Also
auditors made phone calls to the same ad during a short time span (i.e. 30 minutes)
to insure that property owner characteristics and housing market conditions were the
same for both teammates. Teammates were matched on the basis of …ctitious age,
occupation (e.g. bank o¢ cer, doctor, professor), education (high-skilled), income and
family characteristics (single) to avoid auditors’ characteristics to bias the results.
Finally, the order of the applications from the two applicants was controlled. Each
applicant was the …rst to apply for an apartment in half of the cases. During the call
auditors completed a layout with the characteristics of the rental housing unit such

8
as price, area and street, number of rooms, garage and …nancial guarantors.
The Correspondence Test
The experiment was conducted during October 2008. During this period, our ap-
plicants applied to all apartment ads on Loquo without any restrictions as to size and
cost. We focus on the 28 largest Spanish cities.4 Information on available units was
collected from the information published on the site each Wednesday. We recorded
the following details regarding each available unit: date, the heading of the ad, the
geographical location of the apartment (city and complete address), whether the land-
lord was a private person or a company, the name of the landlord (if available), the
landlord’s gender, the number of rooms in the apartment, and the rental cost per
month. All landlords were tracked during the experiment to avoid that a landlord
was contacted more than once by each applicant.
We needed to create …ctitious applicants whose names represented di¤erent groups
of people and to generate identities for them. The choice of the name is very impor-
tant in the study. To decide on which names are uniquely Moroccan and which are
uniquely Spanish, we use name frequency data collected by the Spanish National Sta-
tistics Institute in 2007. Table 2 tabulates the names and surnames by nationally
along with the per thousand in the population. We use the most popular Spanish
male name, Jose, and the most popular Spanish female name, Maria. To create
several applicants we randomly allocate to these names the four most common Span-
ish surnames, García, González, Fernández and Rodríguez. To create the pro…le for
immigrants we employ the two most common Moroccan male names in Spain, Mo-
4
A Coruña, Alicante, Almería, Badajoz, Barcelona, Bilbao, Cádiz, Córdoba, Girona, Granada,
Lleida, Madrid, Mallorca, Murcia, Málaga, Oviedo/Gijón, Pamplona, Pontevedra/Vigo, Salamanca,
San Sebastián, Santander, Sevilla, Tarragona, Tenerife/Gran Canaria, Toledo, Valencia, Valladolid
and Zaragoza.

9
hamed and Ahmed, and the two most common for females, Fatima and Khadija; and
randomly allocate the four most common Moroccan surnames, El Idrissi, Mohamed,
Saidi and Serroukh.
We create an email address for each …ctitious applicant. The emails accounts
were created from 3 di¤erent providers: gmail, hotmail and yahoo. The email ad-
dresses for the …ctitious applicants were for instance: jose.garcia34@hotmail.com;
mohamed_tahiri@gmail.com; ahmedbenali@yahoo.com. Note that as the names are
quite popular some numbers were added to the email address.
The experiment uses the correspondence email testing method and three applica-
tions are sent to each ad that appears on Loquo. The …rst email is sent by a native
with a Spanish sounding name and it provides detailed information about his/her
current employment situation and occupation (type 1), the second email is sent by
someone with a similar employment and occupation situation than type 1 applicant
but it is now signed with a Moroccan sounding name (type 2), the third emails does
not contain information about the employment and occupation of the applicant and
it has a Moroccan sounding name (type 3).
The templates for each type of email are:
Type 1: Native with information
“Hello,
I am interested in this ‡at. I work for an important commercial bank. I have
recently moved to (city) and I am looking for a ‡at. I am looking for a peaceful place
where to live for at least a couple of years. I would be happy to provide a …nancial
guarantee. Please contact me if interested. Many thanks. NAME"
Type 2: Moroccan with information

10
 “Hello,
I am a Professor at the Sociology department of the University of (the name of
one university in the city or the closest city). I have been living in (city) for a couple
of years and I would like to …nd a new apartment. I have a permanent contract with
the university. I am very interested in your ‡at and I would be very grateful if you
could contact me. Best regards. NAME.”
Type 3: Moroccan without information
“Hello,
I am interested in renting this apartment. I would be very grateful if you contacted
me. Thank you. NAME"
When sending the emails, in half of them the information in the type 1 email was
replaced by the information in type 2 and same applies to the information in type 2
emails (replaced it by information in type 1). Note that the two types can not contain
the same information when sent to the same landlord. The order of the applications
from our three applicants has to be controlled. Each applicant has to be the …rst
of the three to apply for an apartment in one-third of the cases. The time delay
between applications for the same apartment has to be between half hour and one
hour. To avoid the possibility that the typeface of a particular letter might in‡uence
the outcome, the design of the letters has to be alternated between applicants.
Note that given the characteristics of the Spanish grammar where names and
adjectives have both a female and a male form; it is easier for the landlord to identify
the gender of the applicant than in other languages.
After one week we recorded the results from the experiment. First, we record
whether or not the landlord sends a return email in response to the rental enquiry.

11
Second, if emailed back, we record whether the landlords reject the application or
whether they invite further contacts and asked for more information about the appli-
cant. Third, we record whether the landlord directly in the return email invites the
applicant to a showing. We also record the date of each email response and any other
information that was not found in the ad (gender, rental cost. . . )
If there are di¤erences between the response rates of type 2 and type 3 emails,
those are due to statistical discrimination as both applicants have a Moroccan sound-
ing name and the only di¤erences is that type 2 reports information about the socioe-
conomic status of the applicant while type 3 does not. The di¤erence between type 1
and type 2 is most likely a mixture of preference based and statistical discrimination.
These two applicants report similar employment and occupational situations and the
only di¤erence is that type 1 corresponds to a Spanish sounding name while type 2
corresponds to a Moroccan sounding name. However, if some variables relevant for
the landlord’s decision are missing in the application he may still use group belonging
to predict those variables. Therefore the gap in response rates between type 1 and 2
is likely to be a mixture of preference based and statistical discrimination.

4 Results

PRELIMINARY:
The Audit Study
In the telephone based experiments 202 landlords were inquired about the avail-
ability of their rental unit. Each landlord was reached both by a native Spanish
auditor and an auditor with a market foreign accent. Table 3 presents the distribu-
tion of reactions by the landlord when the test people are compared to each other in

12
pairs. The …rst raw presents the results for all auditors and the second and third row
separately for males and females. The column headed "Both yes" provides the share
and the number of cases in which both auditors (i.e. native and foreigner) are invited
to a showing. The one headed "Both no" provides the same information but for the
cases in which none of the two auditors is invited to a showing. The third column
"Native yes" reports the cases when only the native is invited, while the fourth "Im-
migrant yes" reports the cases when only the immigrant is invited. The net incidence
of discrimination is presented in the column furthest to the right in Table 3.
The results suggest that discrimination against immigrants exists in the Spanish
housing market. The number in brackets is the value of the statistics for a test
of di¤erences in means. Thus natives receive a 10% more invitation for a showing
than immigrants and this di¤erence is statistically signi…cant at conventional testing
levels. The last two rows in Table 3 indicate that the e¤ect of discrimination is
statistically signi…cant for foreign-born males but only marginally signi…cant for their
female counterparts.
Table 4 reports information on the degree of discrimination by nationalities. The
largest level of discrimination is found against Ecuadorian males, for whom we observe
that the net incidence of discrimination in invitations to a showing, irrespective of
whether they were positive or negative, between the native and the foreigner auditor
is about 17%. This di¤erence is statistically signi…cant at the 1 percent level.
The Correspondence Test
In this experiment we compare the response to emails sent by applicants with
uniquely Spanish sounding names to that of applicants with clearly Moroccan sound-
ing names and with di¤erent amounts of information disclosed. Tables 5 and 6 report

13
the results for the correspondence email testing procedure. The results contained in
these tables are very preliminary and we brie‡y discuss them with a particular focus
on the e¤ect that disclosing information has on the incidence of discrimination.
An interesting feature in Table 5 is that the di¤erence in response rates between
natives (60.40%) and Moroccan (50.40%) is similar to that found in the phone call
experiment. As it was the case in that experiment, the extent of discrimination
is substantially higher for males (i.e. the response rate is 61.03% for natives and
43.38% for immigrants) than for females (i.e. the response rate is 59.65% for natives
and 58.77% for immigrants).
A comparison of the last four columns in Table 5 allows us to investigate the poten-
tial sources of discrimination. When the response to all applicants is considered, the
…rst row in the table indicates that disclosing information about the socioeconomic
status of the applicant slightly increases his/her chances of receiving a response email
from the landlord (for natives it increases from 58.33% to 62.71%, while for immi-
grants it increases from 49.24% to 51.69%). However the chances of response are
substantially di¤erent between natives (62.71%) and immigrants (51.69%) even when
both applicants provide a similar occupation and employment situation.
From the previous preliminarily results we can conclude that statistical discrim-
ination is not the primary source of discrimination, thus the response rate between
immigrants with and without information is small. If all the information required by
the landlord to make his rental decision was provided in the email, we could attribute
the di¤erence in response rate between the native and the immigrant with information
to tastes or attitudes against immigrants. However, it is likely that some information
relevant for the landlord’s decision is still missing and thus the di¤erence is response

14
rates should be attributed to a mixture of both taste and statistical discrimination.
When we analyze di¤erences in response rates by gender, we observe that the
response rate for females follows a pattern similar to that obtained when all applicants
are compared. However for males, immigrants that provide some information about
their socioeconomic status have lower chances of getting a response email that their
counterparts who do not provide this information (check this results when the sample
increases and also for paired observations).
Similar results are obtained when rates of being invite to a showing are compared
across groups. First, when all applicants are compared we observe that disclosing
information increases the chances of immigrants to getting a showing invitation by
almost 4 percentage point. For females, the results indicate that providing the land-
lord with the applicant’s information regarding her socioeconomic status eliminates
the presence of discrimination. This result would suggest that for females discrimi-
nation is statistical generalization about immigrants and it can disappear if landlords
are accurately informed about the applicant employment prospects.

5 Conclusions

We have performed two …eld experiments to detect the presence of discrimination in

the Spanish rental market. We observe that around 10% of the landlords contacted by
phone arrange a visit with the native speaking auditor while denying the visit to the
immigrant one. Similarly, we perform an additional experiment to try to disentan-
gle the sources of discrimination. Auditors contact ads by email providing di¤erent
amounts of information. In our very preliminary results, we …nd that when both the
native and the immigrant provide no information about themselves, around 9% of the

15
contacted landlords show some discriminatory behavior. When both applicants pro-
vide similar occupation and employment situation the discriminatory behavior does
not change substantially. Although the results di¤er for men and women.

References

[1] Amuedo-Dorantes, C. and S. de la Rica. 2008. "Does Immigration Raise Natives’

Income? National and Regional Evidence from Spain." IZA Working Paper, 3486

[2] Ahmed, A. and M. Hammarstedt. 2008. "Discrimination in the rental housing mar-
ket: A …eld experiment on the Internet." Journal of Urban Economics, 64(2008)
362-272.

[3] Bertrand, M. and S. Mullainathan. 2004. "Are Emily and Greg more employable
than Lakisha and Jamal? A …eld experiment on labor market discrimination."
American Economic Review, 94(4), 991-952.

[4] Carpusor, A. and W. Loges. 2006. "Rental discrimination and ethnicity in names."
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 36(4), 934-1013.

[5] González, L. and F. Ortega. 2008. "How Do Very Open Economies Adjust to
Large Immigration Flows? Recent Evidence from Spanish Regions." IZA Working
Paper, 3311.

[6] Heckman, J. and P. Siegelman. 1993. "Clear and Convincing Evidence: Measure-
ment of Discrimination in America." Urban Institute Press, Washington, USA.

[7] Heckman, J. 1998. "Detecting discrimination." Journal of Economic Perspectives,

12(2), 101-116.

16
[8] Riach, P. and J. Rich. 2002. "Field experiments of discrimination in the market
place." Economic Journal, 112 (483), 480-518.

6 Figures

On this list are various groups of people. Could you please mention any that you would not like to have as neighbors?

Drug People People Immigrants/ Homo People of Heavy Unmarried People speaks
addicts other race with AIDS foreign workers sexuals different religion drinkers couples other language
Spain 04/05 64.25* 6,92 16,08 6,5 7,42 5,67 38,25 3,5 3,25
Spain 99/00 53,18 11,75 20,76 11 14,97 43,34
Spain 94/95 53,43 8,34 23,45 7,35 20,31 40,3

When jobs are scarce, employers should give priority to natives over immigrants?

agree neither disagree dk

Spain 04/05 57,77 8,12 34,11
Spain 99/00 54,26 14,81 28,21 2,73
Spain 94/95 70,44 15,11 12,39 2,06

How about other people from other countries coming here to work. What should the government do?

Spain 04/05 Spain 99/00 Spain 94/95

Let anyone come who want to 7,72 15,72 14,04
Let people come as long as there are jobs available 47,45 57,73 55,08
Place strict limits on the number of foreigners who can come here 41,68 20,84 22,96
Prohibit people coming here from other countries 3,14 2,4 4,46
dk 3,31 3,47

Table 1: World Value Survey Spain (94/95, 99/00, 04/05). Notes: The numbers in the tables
respresent percentages. Number of observations: 94/95 (1211); 99/00 (1209); 04/05 (1200)

17
 Male Per Female Per Surname Per
1000 1000 1000
José 137.3 María 285.5 García 33.2
Antonio 72.1 Carmen 59.7 González 20.8
Juan 64.9 Ana 35.9 Fernández 20.8
Manuel 63.3 Isabel 31.3 Rodríguez 20.7
Francisco 67.7 Dolores 25.9 López 19.6
Luis 39.3 Pilar 22.8 Martínez 18.7
Miguel 32.3 Josefa 22.3 Sánchez 18.3
Javier 32.2 Teresa 20.7 Pérez 17.5
Ángel 29.7 Rosa 19.3 Martín 11.1
Carlos 27.9 Antonia 16.2 Gómez 11

Male Per Female Per Surname Per

1000 1000 1000
Mohamed 101.0 Fatima 68.8 El Idrissi 1.9
Mohamed 44.0 Khadija 25.2 Mohamed 1.8
Ahmed 42.6 Aicha 19.8 Saidi 1.8
Said 25.4 Naima 18.2 Serroukh 1.8
Rachid 22.3 Malika 17.2 El Moussaoui 1.7
Mustapha 20.1 Nadia 15.4 Salhi 1.7
Hassan 16.2 Rachida 15.3 El Amrani 1.7
Youssef 15.0 Fatiha 14.9 Benali 1.6
Abdellah 12.7 Samira 13.0 Tahiri 1.5
Ali 12.4 Amina 12.5 Ziani 1.4

Table 2: Name frequency data (Source: INE, Spanish National

Statistics Institute)

18
 “Both yes” “Both no” “Native yes” “Immigrant Net incidence
yes” of
discrimination
All 79.7 4.95 12.87 2.48 10.39
(161) (10) (26) (5) (21)
[3.90]***
Males 77.08 6.25 15.63 1.04 14.59
(74) (6) (15) (1) (14)
[3.73]***
Females 82.08 3.77 10.38 3.77 6.61
(87) (4) (11) (4) (7)
[1.83]

Table 3: Audit study; Distribution of responses (number of cases in parentheses.

Notes: The numbers in brackets correspond to the statistics of a test for the
comparison of means

19
 Moroccans Colombians Ecuadorians
All 10 4.35 17.46
[2.17] [1.35] [3.02]
Males 14.71 10.34 18.18
[2.39] [1.78] [2.25]
Females 5.55 0 16.67
[0.81] [0] [1.98]

Table 4: Audit Study: Net Incidence of discrimination (rate) by

Nationality. Notes: The numbers in brackets correspond to the
statistics of a test for the comparison of means}

20
 “Natives “Immigrants “Native with “Immigrant “Native “Immigrant
yes” yes” info yes” with info yes” without info without info
yes” yes”
All 60.40 50.40 62.71 51.69 58.33 49.24
(151) (126) (74) (61) (77) (65)
Males 61.03 43.38 55.38 41.54 66.20 45.07
(83) (59) (36) (27) (47) (32)
Females 59.65 58.77 71.70 64.15 49.18 54.10
(68) (67) (38) (34) (30) (33)

Table 5: Correspondence Test: Percentage of applicants with responded

emails rates. Notes: Percentage of natives that received a response mail
from the landlord. Number of landlords contacted 250 ( 142 by males
without information, 122 by females without information, 130 by males
with information, 106 by females without information). Note that each
landlord is contacted twice.

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 “Natives “Immigrants “Native with “Immigrant “Native “Immigrant
yes” yes” info yes” with info yes” without info without info
yes” yes”
All 95.36 92.06 96.10 93.85 94.59 90.16
(144) (116) (74) (61) (70) (55)
Males 98.86 94.92 97.87 93.75 100 96.30
(82) (56) (46) (30) (36) (26)
Females 91.18 89.55 93.33 93.94 89.47 85.29
(62) (60) (28) (31) (34) (29)

Table 6: Correspondence Test: Percentage of applicants invited to a showing. Notes

Percentage of natives that received invitation for a showing. Number of landlords sent
response email (79 by males without information, 63 by females without information, 63 by
males with information, 72 by females without information). Note that each landlord is
contacted twice.

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