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Unpublished Paper
Race Effects on eBay
(2011)
  • Ian Ayres, Yale Law School
  • Mahzarin Banaji, Harvard University
  • Christine Jolls, Yale Law School
Abstract
We investigate the impact of seller race in a field experiment involving baseball card auctions on eBay. Photographs showed the cards held by either a dark-skinned/African-American hand or a light-skinned/Caucasian hand. Cards held by African-American sellers sold for approximately 20% ($0.90) less than cards held by Caucasian sellers, and the race effect was more pronounced in sales of minority player cards. Our evidence of race differentials is important because the on-line environment is well controlled (with the absence of confounding tester effects) and because the results show that race effects can persist in a thick real-world market such as eBay.
Disciplines
Publication Date
2011
Citation Information
Ian Ayres, Mahzarin Banaji and Christine Jolls. "Race Effects on eBay" (2011)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/ian_ayres/23/