The London School of Economics and Political Science
Abstract
In the 1960s and 70s, Congress enacted a number of laws aimed at eliminating discrimination in access to credit in the housing market. Despite these legal prohibitions against discrimination, Hal Martin, Andrew Hanson, and Zackary Hawley find that mortgage lenders do discriminate against African Americans. Using fictitious ‘black’ and ‘white’ names to request mortgage information, they find that lenders sent responses more slowly and less often to those with ”black’ names, and that this difference was even more pronounced for those with lower credit scores
