The empirical literature on compensating wage differentials has a mixed history. While there have been some successes, much of this research finds weak support for the theory of equalizing differences. We argue that this weak support is the result of bias due to dispersion in total job values,...

Gender differences in current and past job tasks may be crucial for understanding the gender wage gap. We use novel task data to address well-known measurement concerns, including that standard task measures assume away within-occupation gender differences in tasks. We find that unique measures...

We use novel data from the Berea Panel Study to reexamine the labor market mechanisms generating the beauty wage premium. We find that the beauty premium varies widely across jobs with different task requirements. Specifically, in jobs where existing research such as Hamermesh and Biddle (1994)...

The effect of negative shifts in public opinion on the economic lives of minorities is unknown. We study the role of racial bias in the U.S. labor market by investigating sudden changes in public opinion about Asians following the anti-Chinese rhetoric that emerged with the COVID-19 pandemic,...

Gender differences in current and past job tasks may be crucial for understanding the gender wage gap. We use novel task data to address well-known measurement concerns, including that standard task measures assume away within-occupation gender differences in tasks. We find that unique measures...

We use novel data to show that the beauty wage premium exists only in jobs where attractiveness is plausibly a productive characteristic. A large premium exists in jobs that require substantial amounts of interpersonal interaction, but no such premium exists in jobs that require working with...