Open AccessStatistical Discrimination or Prejudice? A Large Sample Field Experiment
Author(s) -
Michael Ewens,
Bryan Tomlin,
Liang Choon Wang
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
the review of economics and statistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 8.999
H-Index - 165
eISSN - 1530-9142
pISSN - 0034-6535
DOI - 10.1162/rest_a_00365
Subject(s) - statistical discrimination , renting , prejudice (legal term) , race (biology) , psychology , differential (mechanical device) , perception , social psychology , sample (material) , contrast (vision) , econometrics , field (mathematics) , quality (philosophy) , statistics , mathematics , artificial intelligence , computer science , sociology , political science , engineering , law , gender studies , philosophy , chemistry , epistemology , chromatography , neuroscience , pure mathematics , aerospace engineering
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.
Accelerating Research
Robert Robinson Avenue,
Oxford Science Park, Oxford
OX4 4GP, United Kingdom
Address
John Eccles HouseRobert Robinson Avenue,
Oxford Science Park, Oxford
OX4 4GP, United Kingdom