Racial Disparities in Job Finding and Offered Wages

Roland G. Fryer, Devah Pager and Jörg Spenkuch

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: The extent to which discrimination can explain racial wage gaps is one of the most divisive subjects in the social sciences. Using a newly available dataset, this paper develops a simple empirical test which, under plausible conditions, provides a lower bound on the extent of discrimination in the labor market. Taken at face value, our estimates imply that differential treatment accounts for at least one third of the black-white wage gap. We argue that the patterns in our data are consistent with a search-matching model in which employers statistically discriminate on the basis of race when hiring unemployed workers, but learn about their marginal product over time. However, we cannot rule out other forms of discrimination

Keywords: discrimination; wage gaps; race (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J01 J15 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Racial Disparities in Job Finding and Offered Wages (2013)
Working Paper: Racial Disparities in Job Finding and Offered Wages (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:33607

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