What Happens When Employers Are Free To Discriminate? Evidence From the English Barclays Fantasy Football Premier League

Research on employers’ discrimination is limited by the unlawfulness of such activity. As such, researchers have focused on the intention to hire, rather than hiring decisions and wage settlements. Instead, we rely on a virtual labour market, the UK Fantasy Football league where employers can freely exercise their taste for racial discrimination in terms of hiring, firing workers. We find employers pick players who have performed well in previous games but they are less likely to pick the highest performing players if they are black. The evidence is consistent with taste-based discrimination on grounds of race.