IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/amlawe/v25y2023i1p228-267..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Gender Discrimination in Online Markets

Author

Listed:
  • Christopher A Cotropia
  • Jonathan S Masur
  • David L Schwartz

Abstract

We study whether a seller’s gender impacts the bargained-for price in a product market, specifically baseball cards. We isolate the seller’s gender using an online transaction exposing the buyer to the seller’s gender via the seller’s hand and name. In both a field experiment, in which we actually sell cards on eBay, and a laboratory experiment, in which we conduct surveys via Amazon Mechanical Turk, we find, contrary to current literature, that women sell baseball cards for a higher price and greater profit compared to men. The observed discrimination appears to be both statistical and taste based. These findings contribute to the law and economics literature on discrimination and have ramifications for the economic opportunities of women in the retail marketplace and for the law of gender discrimination. (JEL J16, C91, C93, K31, K38)

Suggested Citation

  • Christopher A Cotropia & Jonathan S Masur & David L Schwartz, 2023. "Gender Discrimination in Online Markets," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 25(1), pages 228-267.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:amlawe:v:25:y:2023:i:1:p:228-267.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/aler/ahad008
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • K31 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Labor Law
    • K38 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Human Rights Law; Gender Law; Animal Rights Law

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:amlawe:v:25:y:2023:i:1:p:228-267.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/aler .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.