Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/51745 
Year of Publication: 
2011
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 5578
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
In this paper, we investigate whether evidence of discriminatory treatment against immigrants in the Spanish mortgage market exists. More specifically, we test whether, ceteris paribus, immigrant borrowers tend to be charged with higher interest rates on their mortgages than their Spanish born counterparts. To do so, we use a unique dataset on granted mortgages that contains information not only regarding the conditions of the loan but also the socio-economic characteristics of the mortgagors. We observe that immigrants are systematically charged with higher interest rates. We apply the well known Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition to measure the extent to which this disparate treatment of lenders in mortgage pricing against immigrants is due to discrimination. Our results indicate that approximately two thirds of the gap in the interest rate between Spanish born and immigrant borrowers can be attributed to discriminatory treatment.
Subjects: 
immigration
discrimination
mortgage pricing
housing market
JEL: 
R21
G21
J14
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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