Seminar Series

2023 - 2024

 Seminar Financed by the TEPREM project

Speaker: Elizaveta Pronkina (Amazon).

Title: “The Evolution of Discrimination in Online Markets: How the Rise in Anti-Asian Bias Affected Airbnb during the Pandemic.”

joint with Michael Luca (Havard BS) and Michelangelo Rossi (Télécom Paris)

Date: Thursday, January 25 at 12h30 (Paris Time).

Abstract: We present evidence that discrimination against Asian-American Airbnb users sharply increased at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a DiD approach, we find that hosts with distinctively Asian names experienced a 20 percent decline in guests relative to hosts with distinctively White names. In contrast, we do not see spikes in discrimination against Black or Hispanic hosts. Our results suggest that the rise in anti-Asian sentiment in 2020 translated to discrimination in economic activity, highlighting the ways in which scapegoating minority groups can shape markets. Our results also point to the role of platform design choices in enabling discrimination.

(E. Pronkina acknowledges that this work was done prior to the author joining Amazon.)

Here are links to the FEELab website and the TEPREME project website:

https://sites.google.com/view/feelabtbs/

https://sites.google.com/view/tepreme/home

You are cordially invited to participate to the seminar of the FEELab, which will take place in Room 321, Lascrosses building:

For more information, please contact: Anna D’Annunzio a.d-annunzio@tbs-education.fr or Pierre Mella-Barral p.mella-barral@tbs-education.fr