Taste discrimination as statistical discrimination in Indian rental housing markets

Abstract

Discrimination in any marketplace (labour, rental, housing etc.) occurs when marketplace participants with similar economic characteristics experience dissimilar economic outcomes due to non-economic factors like gender, race, skin colour, ethnicity, and other noneconomic factors. Social scientists and economists have been studying discrimination and trying to quantify it for a long time now. Models of discrimination in economics are of two types- competitive and collective models. David Autor (2003) defines competitive models as those that study the maximizing behaviour of individuals, which may include discrimination. While collective models work where groups collectively act against each other. Both the classical models of discrimination in Economics, taste-based and statistical discrimination fall under the category of competitive models.