Better residential than ethnic discrimination

This article investigates discrimination and the interplay of residential and ethnic stigma on the French housing market using two different methods, paired-testing au- dit study of real estate agencies and face-to-face interviews with real estate agents. The juxtaposition of their findings leads to a paradox: interviews reveal high levels of ethnic discrimination but little to none residential discrimination, while the audit study shows that living in deprived suburbs is associated with a lower probability of obtaining an appointment for a housing vacancy but ethnic origin (signaled by the candidate’s name) has no significant discriminatory effect. We have three priors po- tentially consistent with this apparent paradox and re-evaluate their likelihood in light of these findings: (i) agents make use of any statistical information about insolvency, including residency; (ii) there are two distinct and independent taste discriminations, one about space and one about ethnicity; (iii) these two dimensions exist and comple- ment each other.