Uncovering Sophisticated Discrimination with the Help of Credence Goods Markups: Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment
通过自然现场实验，发现当服务被视为信任品时，少数群体成员需支付显著的歧视性加成，而普通商品则无此现象，表明卖家利用信息不对称隐藏歧视行为。
Credence goods, such as repair and healthcare services, are characterized by profound information asymmetries between less-informed customers and better-informed expert sellers. These information asymmetries open the door for fraudulent behavior on the seller side. In a preregistered natural field experiment, we vary in one dimension the seller’s perception of whether the service is an ordinary or a credence good service and in the second dimension whether the customer is a member of a minority or a member of the majority. This allows us to measure the size of the induced credence goods markup and to address the question whether it interacts systematically with discrimination. We document the existence of a large credence goods markup, on average. Moreover, we find that members of the minority pay a sizeable discriminatory markup if the good is perceived as a credence good but not if it is perceived as an ordinary good. Our results show that sellers engage in sophisticated discrimination where informational asymmetries are used to hide discriminatory (fraudulent) behavior. With the help of an ex post survey, we derive a possible explanation for our results. This paper was accepted by Maria Claire Villeval, behavioral economics and decision analysis. Funding: Financial support was provided by the Austrian Science Fund [Special Research Area Grant SFB F63 and Grants P26901 and P27912]. Supplemental Material: The online appendices and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.02666 .