Ethnical discrimination in Europe: Field evidence from the finance industry

PLoS One. 2018 Jan 29;13(1):e0191959. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0191959. eCollection 2018.

Abstract

The integration of ethnical minorities has been a hotly discussed topic in the political, societal, and economic debate. Persistent discrimination of ethnical minorities can hinder successful integration. Given that unequal access to investment and financing opportunities can cause social and economic disparities due to inferior economic prospects, we conducted a field experiment on ethnical discrimination in the finance sector with 1,218 banks in seven European countries. We contacted banks via e-mail, either with domestic or Arabic sounding names, asking for contact details only. We find pronounced discrimination in terms of a substantially lower response rate to e-mails from Arabic senders. Remarkably, the observed discrimination effect is robust for loan- and investment-related requests, across rural and urban locations of banks, and across countries.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Economics*
  • Ethnicity*
  • Europe
  • Humans
  • Industry*
  • Prejudice*

Grants and funding

Financial support from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF START-grant Y617-G11 and SFB F63) is gratefully acknowledged. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.