Speech to the Center for the Study of Democracy 2006-2007 Economics of Governance Lecture, University of California, Irvine, November 6, 2006>

Using Current Population Survey data, we find that the gap between wages by black and white males declined during the 1990s at a rate of 0.59 percentage point per year. The reduction in occupational crowding appears to be most important in explaining this trend. Recent wage convergence was most...

We study earnings mobility and instability using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Our main contribution is to update mobility and instability calculations to include data from the 1990s, although we also provide a number of tests of robustness across mobility and instability...

Using Current Population Survey data, we find that the gap between wages by black and white males declined during the 1990s at a rate of 0.59 percentage point per year. The reduction in occupational crowding appears to be most important in explaining this trend. Recent wage convergence was most...