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Where does racial discrimination occur? An experimental analysis across neighborhood and housing unit characteristics

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  • Hanson, Andrew
  • Hawley, Zackary

Abstract

This paper examines racial discrimination across several neighborhood and housing unit characteristics including racial composition, rent, and distance from the urban core. We find that African Americans face higher rates of discrimination than whites in a wide range of racially mixed neighborhoods, in higher rent areas, closer to central cities, and in low vacancy areas. These results are robust to various parameterizations of the local smoothing empirical specification and within a multivariate nonlinear parametric estimation technique. The location of discrimination supports the current/future customer prejudice and perceived preference hypotheses as a cause of discrimination in housing markets but not the landlord taste-based hypothesis.

Suggested Citation

  • Hanson, Andrew & Hawley, Zackary, 2014. "Where does racial discrimination occur? An experimental analysis across neighborhood and housing unit characteristics," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 94-106.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:regeco:v:44:y:2014:i:c:p:94-106
    DOI: 10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2013.12.001
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Adu, Providence & Delmelle, Elizabeth C., 2022. "Spatial Variations in Exclusionary Criteria from Online Rental Advertisements," SocArXiv 8g4sv, Center for Open Science.
    2. Ghekiere, Abel & Verhaeghe, Pieter-Paul, 2022. "How does ethnic discrimination on the housing market differ across neighborhoods and real estate agencies?," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(C).
    3. Gaddis, S. Michael, 2018. "An Introduction to Audit Studies in the Social Sciences," SocArXiv e5hfc, Center for Open Science.
    4. Zanoni, Wladimir & Díaz, Lina, 2024. "Discrimination against migrants and its determinants: Evidence from a Multi-Purpose Field Experiment in the Housing Rental Market," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 167(C).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Racial discrimination; Rental housing; Field experiment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments

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