Existing work suggests that black-white gaps in potential wages are much larger among men than women and further that black-white differences in patterns of female labor supply are unimportant. However, panel data on wages and income sources demonstrate that the modal young black woman who does...

The Chicago Workshop on Black–White Inequality, funded by the Searle Freedom Trust, meets on a semiannual basis to explore the causes and consequences of economic inequality between blacks and whites in the U.S. On December 15, 2006, the second meeting of the workshop was hosted by the Federal...

Recent decennial censuses and the American Community Survey (ACS) collect data that permit construction of average hourly wage rates. However, reports concerning usual hours worked during the past year contain errors that create incredible implied wages for part-time workers.

The author summarizes the literature on the relative performance of public and private schools over the past decade and assesses what we have learned from these studies. Although many questions remain unanswered, the author concludes that private schooling--in particular, Catholic schooling--can...

The model of job search involves both employer matches and career matches and incorporates an asymmetry in the search technology. Workers may change employers without changing careers, but cannot search over possible lines of work while working for one employer. The optimal policy implies a...

Many test-based accountability systems, including the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), place great weight on the numbers of students who score at or above specified proficiency levels in various subjects. Accountability systems based on these metrics often provide incentives for teachers...

Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, this paper provides a detailed analysis of the effect of Catholic secondary schooling on high-school graduation rates and also examines Catholic schooling's effect on college graduation rates and future wages. The paper uses data from...

This article examines the effect of Catholic secondary schooling on high school graduation rates, college graduation rates, and future wages. The article introduces new measures of access to Catholic schools that serve as potential instruments for Catholic school attendance. Catholic secondary...

Several empirical regularities motivate most theories of the distribution of labor earnings. Earnings distributions tend to be skewed to the right and display a long right tail. The are leptokurtic (positive fourth cumulant) and have a fat tail. Mean earnings always exceed median earnings and...