IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/apandp/v111y2021p196-200.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Civil Rights Enforcement and the Racial Wage Gap

Author

Listed:
  • Jamein P. Cunningham
  • Jose Joaquin Lopez

Abstract

We present new evidence on three measures of civil rights enforcement—litigation, judge dismissal, and plaintiff win rates—across US district courts from 1979 to 2016. Across courts, higher shares of Republican judges are associated with higher dismissal rates regardless of court composition in terms of gender and race. Further, we find that states with higher litigation rates also exhibit higher racial wage gaps, whereas states with higher judge dismissal (plaintiff win) rates experience higher (lower) racial wage gaps. Our results highlight the importance of legal institutions on the persistence of racial inequality.

Suggested Citation

  • Jamein P. Cunningham & Jose Joaquin Lopez, 2021. "Civil Rights Enforcement and the Racial Wage Gap," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 111, pages 196-200, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:apandp:v:111:y:2021:p:196-200
    DOI: 10.1257/pandp.20211111
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pandp.20211111
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pandp.20211111.ds
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1257/pandp.20211111?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • K38 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Human Rights Law; Gender Law; Animal Rights Law
    • K31 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Labor Law
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:apandp:v:111:y:2021:p:196-200. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.