Essays on Ethnic Discrimination

This thesis investigates the ethnic discrimination faced by the minority communities under different scenarios. Chapter 2 examines ethnic discrimination in the rental housing market in England using an online experiment. We investigate discrimination by running a large scale experiment where fictious identities sent inquiries to property advertisements posted on a leading property portal signalling different ethnicities and specific personal information. For the experiment, 5,545 online inquiries were made. Results suggest significant differential treatment towards potential tenants based on applicant's ethnicity. We find that inquiries sent with British sounding names have better chance of being invited for property viewing compared to the Non-British applicants. The estate agents further discriminate based on the information provided on the inquiry form. We also analyse heterogeneous effects. Chapter 3 explores the ethnic discrimination in the rental housing market through telephone inquiry method. We test for discrimination in the English rental market via telephone inquiries by trained callers from different ethnic backgrounds. We made 1,472 rental inquiries where the ethnic identity and explicit accent associated with the identity were signalled directly to the estate agents. We find that the British applicants are more likely to be booked in for viewing a property or offered a call back. Chapter 4 investigates ethnic discrimination while conducting stop and search by the police officials in England and Wales. I used the latest available data on stop and search and police workforce to assess ethnic disproportionality and explore the effect of ethnic composition of the police workforce on it. I find that even though the number of stop and search has been declining, there exists ethnic disproportionality for minority communities. Blacks suffer the highest disproportionality in stops and searches and its extent varies across the regions. I also find that more diversity in the police workforce, especially in those categories with stop and search power significantly reduces the search disproportionality for Black and Minority Ethnicities (BME).