Does wealth explain black-white differences in early employment careers?

• Autores: Sílvio Rendon
• Localización: Documentos de trabajo. Economic series ( Universidad Carlos III. Departamento de Economía ), Nº. 23, 2003
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This paper inquires on the effect of initial wealth in racial differences in early employment careers. I set up a dynamic model in which people simultaneously search for a job and accumulate wealth, and fit it to data from the National Longitudinal Survey (1979-cohort). With the recovered behavioral parameters, I perform regime changes consisting in giving blacks (i) the initial wealth distribution, and (ii) the arrival rates and wage offer distribution of whites. These counterfactual experiments show that initial wealth has a modest influence in the black-white difference in early employment careers in comparison with labor market variables.