We explore the extent to which the large race gap in wealth can be explained with properly constructed income and demographic variables. In some instances we explain the entire wealth gap with income and demographics, provided that we estimate the wealth model on a sample of whites. However, we...

If hours can be freely varied within jobs, the effect on hours of changes in preferences for those who do change jobs should be similar to the effect on hours for those who do not change jobs. Conversely, if employers restrict hours choices, then changes in preferences should affect hours more...

Several previous studies have relied on religious affiliation and the proximity to Catholic schools as exogenous sources of variation for identifying the effect of Catholic schooling on a wide variety of outcomes. Using three separate approaches, we examine the validity of these instrumental...

There is much public discussion but almost no evidence on the effects of high school curriculum on postsecondary education and on success in the labor market. I use the large variation in curriculum across U.S. high schools to identify the effects on wages and educational attainment of specific...

We develop a model in which a set of unobserved parental and sibling factors drives wages and work preferences. These factors lead to similarities within families in wages, work hours, and earnings. We estimate the model using data on parents and siblings in the National Longitudinal Surveys. We...

The large changes in relative wages that occurred during the 1980s provide fertile ground for studying the behavioral responses of married couples to the wage changes of husbands and wives. I find estimates of own-wage and cross-wage elasticities for men that are very small. The own-wage...

This paper uses Norwegian data to estimate the effect of family size on IQ scores of men. Instrumental variables (IV) estimates using sex composition as an instrument show no significant negative effect of family size; however, IV estimates using twins imply that family size has a negative effect...