The distributional impact of housing discrimination in a non-Walrasian setting

In a Walrasian housing market, the impacts of discrimination might be expected to be relatively modest. Any agent willing to pay the equilibrium price will be able to obtain a unit eventually, even if he is the last person to be told about available units. An alternative view is that housing markets are essentially non-Walrasian. In such a market there will be no single market-clearing price for housing of a given quality. Similar units will sell for prices that will depend on the relative bargaining strength of the buyers and sellers. In this case discrimination might have more significant effects. We employ an agent-based model of a non-Walrasian housing market to investigate the impacts of access discrimination. We explore the magnitude and distribution of the impacts within the economy.