"Affirmative action policies are practiced around the world. This paper explores the welfare economics of such policies. A model is proposed where heterogeneous agents, distinguished by skill level and social identity, compete for positions in a hierarchy. The problem of designing an efficient...

The gender earnings gap among full-time workers narrowed substantially in the 1980s. Previous research has established that increases in the amount of and returns to work experience and schooling among women were primarily responsible for that trend. This paper, which uses data from the National...

This article shows that college performance and selectivity have significant effects on earnings. It suggests that work that does not include college performance overstates the effect of college selectivity for whites and understates it for blacks. While the size of the effect of college...

The explanation typically given for longer tenure among workers who use informal contacts to find jobs is that relatives and friends reduce uncertainty about the quality of the match between worker and employer. An alternative explanation is that workers rely on informal information sources as a...