TY  - JOUR
AU  - Fryer,Roland G., Jr
AU  - Pager,Devah
AU  - Spenkuch,Jörg L.
TI  - Racial Disparities in Job Finding and Offered Wages
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 17462
PY  - 2011
Y2  - September 2011
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17462
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17462.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Roland G. Fryer, Jr
Department of Economics
Harvard University
Littauer Center 208
Cambridge, MA  02138
Tel: 617/495-9592
Fax: 617/495-8570
E-Mail: rfryer@fas.harvard.edu

Devah Pager
Department of Sociology
Princeton University
157 Wallace Hall
Princeton, NJ 08544
E-Mail: pager@princeton.edu

Jorg L. Spenkuch
Department of Economics
University of Chicago
1126 East 59th Street
Chicago, IL  60637
E-Mail: jspenkuch@uchicago.edu
AB  - The extent to which discrimination can explain racial wage gaps is one of the most divisive subjects in the social sciences. Using a newly available dataset, this paper develops a simple empirical test which, under plausible conditions, provides a lower bound on the extent of discrimination in the labor market. Taken at face value, our estimates imply that differential treatment accounts for at least one third of the black-white wage gap. We argue that the patterns in our data are consistent with a search-matching model in which employers statistically discriminate on the basis of race when hiring unemployed workers, but learn about their marginal product over time. However, we cannot rule out other forms of discrimination.
ER  -