Discrimination in access to public services can act as a major obstacle towards addressing racial inequality. We examine whether racial discrimination exists in access to a wide spectrum of public services in the US. We carry out an email correspondence study in which we pose simple queries to...

We examine whether concerns about lenders’ discrimination based on community racial characteristics can be empirically substantiated in the context of neighborhoods on and near American Indian reservations. Drawing on a large-scale dataset consisting of individual-level credit bureau records,...

The use of height data to measure living standards is now a well-established method in the economic literature. Moreover, while much is known about 19th century black legal and material conditions, less is known about how 19th century institutional arrangements were related to black stature....

This paper examines how marital and fertility patterns have changed along racial and educational lines for men and women. Historically, women with more education have been the least likely to marry and have children, but this marriage gap has eroded as the returns to marriage have changed....

This paper uses a new data set on domestic child adoption to document the preferences of potential adoptive parents over born and unborn babies relinquished for adoption by their birth mothers. We show that adoptive parents exhibit significant biases in favor of girls and against...

The use of height data to measure living standards is now a well-established method in the economic literature. Moreover, while much is known about 19th century black legal and material conditions, less is known about how 19th century institutional arrangements were related to black stature....

Vitamin D is vital in all vertebrates because it allows them to absorb more calcium from their diets, contributing to stronger skeletal systems and stature growth. Using a new source of 19th century US state prison records, this study contrasts the statures of comparable African-Americans and...

Using a source of 19th century US state prison records, this study addresses European-American stature variation. The most commonly cited sources for stature variation are diets, disease, and work effort. However, vitamin D is also vital in human statures and health. This paper demonstrates that...