RACIAL-DISCRIMINATION IN THE BOSTON HOUSING-MARKET

Recent studies suggest that price differentials between what whites and blacks pay for housing are largely a function of changes in supply and demand in the two submarkets. These studies, however, estimate models that assume a unified housing market. As a result, imputed prices of housing attributes cannot vary with location, and the analyses obscure important racial price differentials. Based on a more realistic and complex housing market theory, the model described in this paper indicates that housing prices are substantially higher in the ghetto and transition areas than in white areas, and that within the same area blacks must pay more than whites for equivalent housing. © 1979.