Racial Screening on the Big Screen? Evidence from the Motion Picture Industry

We develop a model of discrimination that allows us to interpret observed differences in outcomes across groups, conditional on passing a screening test, as taste-based (employer), statistical, or customer discrimination. We apply this framework to investigate the nature of non-white underrepresentation in the US motion picture industry. Leveraging a novel data set with racial identifiers for the cast of 7,000 motion pictures, we show that, conditional on production, non-white movies exhibit higher average revenues and a smaller variance. Our findings can be rationalized in the context of our model if non-white movies are held to higher standards for production.