Public Policy and Individual Labor Market Discrimination: An Artefactual Field Experiment in China

We study discrimination based on the hukou system, a policy segregating migrants and locals in urban China. We hired household aids as participants in our artefactual field experiment and use a gift exchange game to study labor market discrimination. We find that social discrimination based on hukou status also implies individual level discrimination. To identify whether discrimination is statistical or taste-based we introduce the wage promising game, a gift exchange game with a cheap talk wage promise. We find that discrimination is taste-based: Status is exogenous for our participants, migrants and locals behave similarly and discrimination increases when reasons for statistical discrimination are removed.