Statistical Discrimination or Prejudice? A Large Sample Field Experiment

Michael Ewens, Bryan Tomlin and Liang Wang
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Bryan Tomlin: NERA Economic Consulting

The Review of Economics and Statistics, 2014, vol. 96, issue 1, 119-134

Abstract: A model of racial discrimination provides testable implications for two features of statistical discriminators: differential treatment of signals by race and heterogeneous experience that shapes perception. We construct an experiment in the U.S. rental apartment market that distinguishes statistical discrimination from taste-based discrimination. Responses from over 14,000 rental inquiries with varying applicant quality show that landlords treat identical information from applicants with African American– and white-sounding names differently. This differential treatment varies by neighborhood racial composition and signal type in a manner consistent with statistical discrimination and in contrast to patterns predicted by a model of taste-based discrimination. © 2014 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Keywords: racial discrimination; prejudice; racism; rentals; landlords; housing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 J70 J71 R3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (137)

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Working Paper: Statistical Discrimination or Prejudice? A Large Sample Field Experiment (2012)
Working Paper: Statistical Discrimination or Prejudice? A Large Sample Field Experiment
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