Discrimination during the Paris 2024 Olympics: Evidence from a field experiment on Airbnb

In a field experiment on Airbnb in Paris during and after the 2024 Olympic Games, we examine how discrimination responds to temporary market disruptions. During the Olympics, booking requests from male and North African–sounding guests were significantly less likely to be accepted than those from female or French-sounding guests. After the Games, discrimination against male guests disappeared, and bias against North African–sounding guests, though still present, declined substantially. Our results suggest that the higher prejudice during the Olympic Games was driven primarily by increased host selectivity in neighborhoods experiencing the strongest Airbnb market tensions. Exploiting variation in Airbnb’s Instant Book feature, we find that ethnic discrimination is primarily statistical, while gender discrimination is more consistent with taste-based preferences for women. Beyond acceptance rates, North African–sounding guests also experienced slower and less enthusiastic positive responses, pointing to both strategic and implicit forms of unequal treatment.