Statistical discrimination or prejudice? A large sample field experiment

M Ewens, B Tomlin, LC Wang - Review of Economics and Statistics, 2014 - direct.mit.edu
Review of Economics and Statistics, 2014direct.mit.edu
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 US 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 …
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.
MIT Press