Standard analysis of racial inequality incorporates racial classification as an exogenous binary variable. This approach obfuscates the importance of racial self-identity and clouds our ability to understand the relative importance of unobserved productivity-linked attributes versus market...

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.

Research on intergenerational economic mobility often ignores the geographic context of childhood, including neighborhood quality and local purchasing power. We hypothesize that individual variation in intergenerational mobility is partly attributable to regional and neighborhood conditions —...

One approach to analyzing inequality is to compare average economic choices from a classical theoretical framework. Another approach considers the impact of the formation of society, through statutes and institutions, on average economic outcomes. This paper studies the effects of slavery on...

At the height of the US civil rights movement in the mid-1960s, foreign-born persons were less than 1 % of the African-American population (Kent, Popul Bull, 62:4, 2007). Today, 16 % of America’s African diaspora workforce consists of first- or second-generation immigrants and 4 % is Hispanic....

Understanding the formation of trust at the individual level is a key issue given the impact that it has been recognized to have on economic development. Theoretical work highlights the role of the transmission of values such as trust from parents to their children. Attempts to empirically...