Working Papers

Slavs Only: Open Xenophobia and Racial Disparities in Rental Housing (joint with Vladimir Avetian) under review

Viktor

Abstract: Discriminatory preferences in housing markets are difficult to observe, let alone quantify. In Moscow’s rental market, however, landlords openly state racial preferences: we find that 20% of listings include explicit ethnic criteria. Using a novel high-frequency dataset, we show that listings with overtly discriminatory language (e.g., ''Slavs only'' or ''Russians only'') are 4% cheaper than comparable apartments in the same building. A correspondence experiment reveals that both overt and subtle forms of discrimination coexist and amplify each other: non-Russian-sounding applicants receive significantly fewer responses, especially when listings contain explicit bias. Even when no bias is stated, subtle discrimination persists, although it is considerably weaker. In areas with less overt discrimination, subtle bias is also less common, which suggests that when explicit prejudice declines, landlords do not compensate by discriminating more subtly. Our findings indicate that landlords are willing to bear economic costs to exclude racial minorities, directly linking prejudice to price differentials.

Publications in Russian

Estimation of Electronic Procedures Effects in Public Procurement Under Favoritism (joint with Sergei Belev and Evgenii Matveev)

Voprosy Ekonomiki. 2023 (In Russian)

Priority Development Areas and Productivity Growth in Russian Cities (joint with Sergei Belev and Olga Suchkova)

HSE Economic Journal. 2021 (In Russian)

Work in Progress

Public Transport: A Route to Reduce Employment Gap?