Gender Discrimination in Online Markets

Abstract We study whether a seller’s gender impacts the bargained-for price in a product market, specifically baseball cards. We isolate the seller’s gender using an online transaction exposing the buyer to the seller’s gender via the seller’s hand and name. In both a field experiment, in which we actually sell cards on eBay, and a laboratory experiment, in which we conduct surveys via Amazon Mechanical Turk, we find, contrary to current literature, that women sell baseball cards for a higher price and greater profit compared to men. The observed discrimination appears to be both statistical and taste based. These findings contribute to the law and economics literature on discrimination and have ramifications for the economic opportunities of women in the retail marketplace and for the law of gender discrimination. (JEL J16, C91, C93, K31, K38)