We assess the evolution of consumption inequality in Canada over the years 1997 to 2009. We correct the imputation of shelter consumption for owner-occupiers to allow for unobserved differences in housing quality correlated with selection into rental tenure, and we account for measurement error...

We investigate whether immigrant and minority workers’ poor access to high-wage jobs— that is, glass ceilings— is attributable to poor access to jobs in high-wage …rms, a phenomenon we call glass doors. Our analysis uses linked employer-employee data to measure mean- and...

Recent research on glass ceilings and sticky floors has focused on the magnitude of differences between groups in the upper and lower quantile cutoffs of the conditional wage distribution. However, quantile cutoffs for different groups are only weakly informative of representation. For example,...

Recent research on glass ceilings and sticky floors has focused on the magnitude of differences between groups in the upper and lower quantile cutoffs of the conditional wage distribution. However, quantile cutoffs for different groups are only weakly informative of representation. For example,...

We construct a peer effects model where mean expenditures of consumers in one's peer group affect utility through perceived consumption needs. We provide a novel method for obtaining identification in social interactions models like ours, using ordinary survey data, where very few members of...

We investigate whether immigrant and minority workers' poor access to high-wage jobs - that is, glass ceilings - is attributable to poor access to jobs in high-wage firms, a phenomenon we call glass doors. Our analysis uses linked employer-employee data to measure mean- and quantile-wage...

We present a new class of social cost-of-living indices and a nonparametric framework for estimating these and other social cost-of-living indices. Common social cost-of-living indices can be understood as aggregator functions of approximations of individual cost-of-living indices. The Consumer...