Abstract

Minority group underrepresentation in advisory positions is ubiquitous. We study discrimination in seeking advice as a potential channel. Amazon Mechanical Turk workers face a task that is difficult to solve without prior advice. We elicit subjects’ willingness to pay for a video tutorial before solving the task. We manipulate the race of the advisor, signalled by the skin color of their hand. We vary the skin color using realistic video post-production techniques, eliminating any residual confounds. To causally study advice use and performance unconditional of demand for advice, we employ an incentive compatible mechanism assigning a positive probability to receiving advice with certainty. We study mechanisms by manipulating information about advisor in an advisor selection exercise. We find no discrimination on average at either stage. This is despite the salience of the experimental manipulation and sufficient statistical power. We disentangle the potential heterogeneity of the average null effect by subjects’ political views.

Practical information