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This paper estimates a reduced form racial identity equation for a sample of African American survey respondents. The change in a state's fraction of white votes for Obama in 2008 relative to Kerry in 2004 provides an empirical proxy for a change in white antagonism toward African Americans. Using Current Population Survey data from 2003 to 2013, this paper finds that there is a positive and statistically significant Obama-effect on African American self-identification as mixed-race rather than as black-alone.

This paper critically assesses the empirical evidence on the relationship between immigration and African American employment. Studies using various methodologies and data are reviewed: natural experiments, time series, and cross-sectional studies of local labor markets and intertemporal changes in the national labor market. We find that for African Americans as a whole, immigration may have little effect on mean wages and probability of employment. However, there is some evidence that immigration may have had an adverse impact on the labor market outcomes of African Americans belonging to low education-experience groups. However, even this modest conclusion must be qualified: the literature has many unresolved econometric issues that might easily undermine the received wisdom.

This paper empirically examines the relationship between the self-identity as Indigenous and earnings inequality in the Mexican labor market. Using Mexican Census data and a large set of wage covariates reveals the existence of an earnings penalty for self-identification as Indigenous. There is an additional and larger penalty for Indigenous persons who are fluent in an Indigenous language, regardless of Spanish language fluency. Further analyses using the Mexican Family Life Survey reveal that these earnings gaps persist after we also control for an individual’s cognitive ability. Ethno-linguistic inequality is particularly strong in smaller cities and among self-employed workers. JEL Classification: J10, J15, J31, J71, O15

This paper examines intertemporal changes in racial disparity among mature Americans during the post-Jim Crow era, that is, 1965–2006. For a large nationally representative sample of American households, we pay special attention to differences between the South and other national regions, as the majority of African Americans do now and always have resided in the South. Historically, periods of progress in African American wellbeing have been followed by periods of regress that are often initiated by some combination of social change, government policy, and macroeconomic instability. Accordingly, we construct an overlapping series of five synthetic intertemporal cohorts of new seniors (ages 50–64). Cohorts are separated by the troughs of recessions. Finally, we note that regardless of race, men and women experience dissimilar opportunities in the market and in society; hence, gender dissimilarity is incorporated into our analysis. We find 1) large reductions in Post-Jim Crow contemporary disparity; 2) we also find large continuing disparity among the most recent cohorts; and, 3) changes in Southern racial weekly wage inequality (especially among men) have been especially important for determining the national pattern.

At the height of the US civil rights movement in the mid-1960s foreign-born persons were less than one percent of the African American popu lation. Today, 12 percent of America's African Diaspora work force consists of immigrants, and three percent are Hispanic. Some black immi grants?for example, Haitians and Spanish speaking Caribbean immigrants?have lower earnings and lower productivity-linked charac teristics than native African Americans. Other

This paper investigates two questions. First, what is the relative importance of the components of childhood family environment—parental values versus parental class status—for young adult economic outcomes? Second, are interracial differences in labor market outcomes fully explained by differences in family environment? We find that both family values and family class status affect intergenerational mobility and inter-racial inequality. Consideration of racial differences in parental values and class status alters but does not eliminate the impact of race on the labor market outcomes of young adults.

This paper examines the issue of racism in economic research. Black and non-black scholars do see the world differently. Black authors are 13% more likely to report a finding of racial discrimination against blacks. Additionally, among the profession as a whole, there is a continuous long-term trend against published studies finding racial discrimination in the economics of crime, credit, or labor markets. Further, papers published in The Review of Black Political Economy (RBPE)—a black controlled economics journal—receive nearly four fewer citations than papers published in the average economics journals, while papers published in the top-tier journals receive a premium of more than eight citations relative to the average economics journal. Finally, black authors were slightly less likely to publish in top-tier journals.

This paper contrasts competing theories and evidence on the nature and significance of African American racial identity. In particular, we seek to examine whether race is best understood as a set of values and behaviors or whether race is best understood as a social norm.

Racial inequality remains a substantial problem in American society. Competing explanations of African American - white inequality often overlap but they are often also quite contentious. Recent empirical studies on the role of race and labor have tended to absolve the market process of contributing to persistent racial discrimination. The most sophisticated studies that claim to show no discrimination within the labor market rely on a single test score variable (the AFQT) within one dataset. However, the AFQT over-estimates African American - white pre-labor market skill differences, its predictions have not been replicated by studies that employ different measures of cognitive skills, and it yields inconsistent and counter-intuitive results when decomposed into its component parts. After reviewing some of the most recent literature, this study concludes that the notion that competition will eliminate discrimination within the labor market is little more than conservative political ideology masquerading ...

Persistent interracial wage differentials present a challenge for neoclassical models of discrimination, which claim that long-rung competition is not consistent with persistent discrimination. This study provides an empirical examination of the missing variable and job competition models of interracial wage inequality. The results argue strongly against the missing variables approach and strongly in favor of the job competition model. Specifically, this study finds that about one-half of the male African American-white and Latino-white interracial wage differentials are due to market discrimination against African Americans and Latinos. In addition, the positive and significant coefficients on the race-gender employment-density variables strongly affirm the job competition model's contention that access to white (especially) male-dominated jobs increases an individual's wage rate--regardless of race. Racial job segregation, then, is an important explanatory variable for racial wage discrimination. Copyright 1999 by Oxford University Press.

This article examines the interrelationships among race, culture, skill, and the distribution of wages. I utilize a three-equation system to explore this process: skill is a multidimensional productive attribute measured by years of education and work effort; educational attainment is a function of class background and individual effort; and individual wage rates are a function of skill and class background. By further assuming that effort is differentially distributed across individuals and social groups, I am able to estimate reduced form equations for educational and earnings attainment, where both equations are functions of the class backgrounds and race of individuals. The collective results of this article challenge the conventional wisdom among economists that African American and Latino job skills are of a lower quality than white job skills. To the extent that effort is an important element of worker skill, our results suggest that neither African American nor Latino labor is of lower quality than white labor. The results regarding differences between African Americans and whites in educational attainment, i.e., African Americans are able to translate a given level of resources into higher levels of educational attainment, reaffirm previous findings in the literature. The results on Latino versus white educational attainment are novel. Additionally, unlike previous research, this article connects racial differences in the skill acquisition process to the economics of discrimination.

This paper develops a competitive model of racial wage and employment discrimination. Discrimination is a persistent outcome of the interaction of two phenomena. The first is the adverse effect of racial conflict on the organisational strength of workers which, in turn, affects the formation of wage differentials. This is a class struggle effect. The second is the negative correlation between the interracial employment ratio and the wage differential, within occupations arid across all capitals. This is a racial exclusion effect. The interaction of the class struggle and racial exclusion effects implies persistent discrimination.

Introduction. I. Self-Employment: Escape From Racism? 1. The Status of Self-Employed and Employee African Americans in the New York City Construction Industry T. Bates, D. Howell. 2. Black Employment Criminal Activity and Entrepreneurship: A Case Study of New Jersey S. Myers, Jr., W.E. Spriggs. II: Racial Wage Inequality and Discrimination. 3. Measuring Wage Discrimination During Periods of Growing Overall Wage Inequality W.M. Rodgers, III. III: Health. 4. Will Greater Competition Improve the Markets for Health Care Services and the Health Outcomes for Black Americans W. Leigh. 5. The Continuing Significance of Race in Meeting the Health Care Needs of Black Elderly S. White-Means. IV: Race Crime and the Neighborhood. 6. Race and Crime: What is the Connection K. Gyimah-Brempong. 7. Why Does Race Matter in Housing and Credit Markets? G. Dymski. Contributing Authors. Index.

This article is an examination of the similarities between Michael Reich's divide-and-conquer model of discrimination and the Becker-Arrow taste model of discrimination. It shows that Reich's model of discrimination is analytically identical to Arrow's employer discrimination model when employer utility is a function of total profits and the racial employment ratio. It also shows that the Becker-Arrow distinction between employer and employee discrimination is invalid. Finally, the author argues that neoclassical competition is the major defect of both models. After discussing the implications of these results the article points to new directions in the literature on the economics of discrimination.