Mixing across racial and ethnic lines could spur understanding or inflame tensions between groups. We find that white students at a large state university randomly assigned African American roommates in their first year were more likely to endorse affirmative action and view a diverse student...

We examine long-term neighborhood effects on low-income families using data from the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) randomized housing-mobility experiment. This experiment offered to some public-housing families but not to others the chance to move to less-disadvantaged neighborhoods. We show that...

Applicants for Social Security disability benefits who fail to pass the medical screening form a natural "control" group for beneficiaries. Data drawn from the 1972 and 1978 surveys of the disabled done for the Social Security Administration show that fewer than 50 percent of rejected male...

During the 1980s, a period in which the average level of real wage rates was roughly stagnant, there were large changes in the structure of relative wages, most notably a huge increase in the relative wages of highly educated workers. This paper attempts to assess the power of several...

One long-standing hypothesis about science and engineering labor markets is that the supply of highly skilled workers is likely to be inelastic in the short run. We consider the market for computer scientists and electrical engineers (IT workers) and the evolution of wages and employment through...