Abstract
When crises hit, social theory predicts increased hostility toward immigrants. We exploit the Covid-19 pandemic as a unique exogenous crisis and examine whether discrimination increased in its wake. Repeating a field experiment in the Swiss housing market in 2018 and 2020, we find no evidence of increased discrimination against the most important immigrant groups in Switzerland. Contrarily, when uncertainty dominates the market, proprietors appear to change their selection behavior by substituting signals of ethnicity for other markers of solvency and reliability and, consequently, invitation rates for immigrants increase relative to native house-hunters. We conclude that crises do not necessarily increase discriminatory behavior in market situations.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | mwac069 |
| Pages (from-to) | 1501-1524 |
| Number of pages | 24 |
| Journal | Socio-Economic Review |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| Early online date | 17 Jan 2023 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Jul 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research was funded by the National Center of Competence in Research nccr—on the move funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant number: 51NF40-142020 51NF40_205605), the Swiss Office for Housing (BWO) and the Swiss Network for International Studies (SNIS).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press and the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics. All rights reserved.
Copyright:
Copyright 2023 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.