By constraining an individual’s choice during a search, housing discrimination distorts sorting decisions away from true preferences and results in a ceteris paribus reduction in welfare. This study combines a large-scale field experiment with a residential sorting model to derive utility-theoretic measures of renter welfare loss associated with the constraints imposed by discrimination in the rental housing market. Results from experiments conducted in five cities show that key neighborhood amenities are associated with higher levels of discrimination. Counterfactual simulations based on the sorting model suggest that discrimination imposes damages equivalent to 4.4% and 3.5% of the annual incomes for African American and Hispanic/Latinx renters, respectively. Damages are increasing in income for African American renters, such that impacts become stronger for economically mobile households. Renters of color must make substantial investments in additional search to mitigate the costs of these constraints. We find that a naive model ignoring discrimination constraints yields biased estimates of willingness to pay for key neighborhood amenities.

中文翻译：

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租赁住房市场歧视造成的损害和扭曲

通过限制个人在寻找过程中的选择，住房歧视扭曲了分类决策，使其偏离真实偏好，并导致在其他条件不变的情况下福利减少。本研究将大规模现场实验与住宅分类模型相结合，得出与租赁住房市场歧视所施加的限制相关的租户福利损失的效用理论衡量标准。在五个城市进行的实验结果表明，主要的社区便利设施与较高程度的歧视有关。基于排序模型的反事实模拟表明，歧视对非裔美国人和西班牙裔/拉丁裔租房者造成的损失分别相当于年收入的 4.4% 和 3.5%。非洲裔美国租房者的收入受到的损害正在增加，这样对经济流动家庭的影响就会更大。有色人种的租用者必须在额外的搜索上进行大量投资，以减轻这些限制的成本。我们发现，忽略歧视约束的朴素模型会对支付关键社区设施的意愿产生有偏差的估计。