This paper attempts to understand the forces that have lead to persistent racial wage inequality by developing a dynamic model of statistical discrimination that accounts for the transmission of earnings across generations. The parameters of this model are then estimated using data from the 1970 and 1990 U.S. Census. The results indicate that racial disparities in the quality of information that firms receive about worker productivity are the primary cause of racial wage inequality in 1990. The results also indicate that neither the persistence of income across generations nor the presence of coordination failures explains a sizable fraction of ongoing inequality.
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Gary S. Becker & Nigel Tomes, 1994.
"X. Human Capital and the Rise and Fall of Families,"
NBER Chapters,
in: Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis with Special Reference to Education (3rd Edition), pages 257-298
National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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Samuel Bowles & Glenn C. Loury & Rajiv Sethi, 2009.
"Group Inequality,"
Economics Working Papers
0088, Institute for Advanced Study, School of Social Science.
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