Working Paper

Racial Rent Differences in U.S. Housing Markets

Authors: Edgar O. Olsen, Paul E. Carrillo, Dirk W. Early

This paper exploits an unusually rich data set to estimate racial differences in the rents paid for identical housing in the same neighborhood in U.S. housing markets and how they vary with neighborhood racial composition. It overcomes the shortcomings of the data used in previous studies. Results suggest that households led by blacks pay more for identical housing in identical neighborhoods than their white counterparts and that this rent gap increases with the fraction of the neighborhood white.

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