ИСТИНА

We study the cost of ethnic discrimination for the landlords in the housing market. There are no legal fines for ethnic discrimination in the Russian market for rental apartments – hence we can observe explicit nationality-based constraints via advertisements. After controlling on all apartment characteristics we find that ethnic discrimination is connected with a significant decrease in price. This result is consistent with Becker’s theory of taste-based discrimination. These losses are lower the more landlords in Neighborhood prefer to discriminate. It sheds some light on mechanism facilitating the persistence of discrimination.