Jakob Utgård

Tag: diskriminering

  • Diskriminering i delingsøkonomien, igjen

    Diskriminering er (sjølvsagt) også eit problem i delingsøkonomien. Tidlegare har diskriminering blitt påvist på AirBnB, no også mellom sjåførar på Uber og Lyft:

    Passengers have faced a history of discrimination in transportation systems. Peer transportation companies such as Uber and Lyft present the opportunity to rectify long-standing discrimination or worsen it. We sent passengers in Seattle, WA and Boston, MA to hail nearly 1,500 rides on controlled routes and recorded key performance metrics. Results indicated a pattern of discrimination, which we observed in Seattle through longer waiting times for African American passengers—as much as a 35 percent increase. In Boston, we observed discrimination by Uber drivers via more frequent cancellations against passengers when they used African American-sounding names. Across all trips, the cancellation rate for African American sounding names was more than twice as frequent compared to white sounding names. Male passengers requesting a ride in low-density areas were more than three times as likely to have their trip canceled when they used a African American-sounding name than when they used a white-sounding name. We also find evidence that drivers took female passengers for longer, more expensive, rides in Boston. We observe that removing names from trip booking may alleviate the immediate problem but could introduce other pathways for unequal treatment of passengers.

    Ge, Yanbo, Christopher R. Knittel, Don MacKenzie, and Stephen Zoepf. 2016. “Racial and Gender Discrimination in Transportation Network Companies.” Working Paper 22776. National Bureau of Economic Research. http://www.nber.org/papers/w22776.

  • Diskriminering på arbeidsmarknaden, igjen

    Ei rekkje studiar har funne at minoritetar blir diskriminerte på arbeidsmarknaden. Ein typisk framgangsmåte i desse studiane er at forskarar sender ut CV-ar som er heilt like bortsett frå namnet, som anten er eit “minoritetsnamn” eller eit “majoritetsnamn”. Ei av utfordringane er at namn ikkje berre signaliserer minoritet/majoritet, men også sosial status eller klasse. Det kan hende at tidlegare studiar har overdrive effekten av diskriminering. Ein ny og omfattande studie som tek omsyn til sosial klasse finn nesten ikkje prov på diskriminering.

    We sent nearly 9000 fictitious resumes to advertisements for job openings in seven major cities in the United States across six occupational categories. We randomly assigned names to the resumes that convey race and gender but for which a strong socio-economic connotation is not implicated. We find little evidence of systematic employer preferences for applicants from particular race and gender groups.

    Darolia, Rajeev, Cory Koedel, Paco Martorell, Katie Wilson, and Francisco Perez-Arce. 2015. “Race and Gender Effects on Employer Interest in Job Applicants: New Evidence from a Resume Field Experiment.” Applied Economics Letters. doi:10.1080/13504851.2015.1114571.

  • Diskriminering også i delingsøkonomien

    Ein stor og god litteratur har tidlegare dokumentert diskriminering basert på etnisitet i arbeidsmarknaden, leigemarknaden og andre marknader, også i Noreg. Det er kanskje ikkje så overraskande, men diskriminering er også ein del av delingsøkonomien. Eit nytt arbeidsnotat frå forskarar ved Harvard finn at gjestar med “afro-amerikanske” namn har 16% mindre sjanse til å bli aksepterte enn gjestar med “kvite” namn. Dette er kostbart for utleigar, som i 1/3 av tilfella ikkje får erstatta den potensielle gjesten.

    Online marketplaces increasingly choose to reduce the anonymity of buyers and sellers in order to facilitate trust. We demonstrate that this common market design choice results in an important unintended consequence: racial discrimination. In a field experiment on Airbnb, we find that requests from guests with distinctively African-American names are roughly 16% less likely to be accepted than identical guests with distinctively White names. The difference persists whether the host is African-American or White, male or female. The difference also persists whether the host shares the property with the guest or not, and whether the property is cheap or expensive. We validate our findings through observational data on hosts’ recent experiences with African-American guests, finding host behavior consistent with some, though not all, hosts discriminating. Finally, we find that discrimination is costly for hosts who indulge in it: hosts who reject African- American guests are able to find a replacement guest only 35% of the time. On the whole, our analysis suggests a need for caution: while information can facilitate transactions, it also facilitates discrimination.

    Edelman, Benjamin G., Michael Luca, and Dan Svirsky. 2016. “Racial Discrimination in the Sharing Economy: Evidence from a Field Experiment.” Harvard Business School NOM Unit Working Paper 16-069. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School. http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2712393.
    (via Kevin Lewis)