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Working Paper
Measuring Inclusion: Gender and Coauthorship at the Federal Reserve Board
Relative to diversity, inclusion is much harder to measure. We measure inclusion of women in economics using novel data on coauthoring relationships among Federal Reserve Board economists. Individual coauthoring relationships are voluntary, yet inclusion in coauthoring networks can be central to research productivity and career success. We document gender affinity in coauthoring, with individuals up to 34 percent more likely to have a same-gender coauthor in the data relative to what would be predicted by random assignment. Because women account for under 30 percent of Federal Reserve Board ...
Journal Article
Racial Differences in Returns on Business Ownership
In this Commentary, we document entrepreneurial income and investments for households of different racial backgrounds and provide estimates of investment yields. We find that an average Black household engaged in entrepreneurial activity has a higher rate of return on its business followed by Hispanic households and white households, a circumstance which makes low entrepreneurship rates among Black and Hispanic communities appear all the more puzzling.
Journal Article
The Racial Wealth Gap and Access to Opportunity Neighborhoods
Some Black households live in neighborhoods with lower incomes, as well as higher unemployment rates and lower educational attainment, than their own incomes might suggest, and this may impede their economic mobility. We investigate reasons for the neighborhood sorting patterns we observe and find that differences in financial factors such as income, wealth, or housing costs between Black and white households do not explain racial distributions across neighborhoods. Our findings suggest other factors are at work, including discrimination in the housing market, ongoing racial hostility, or ...
Working Paper
Gender Gaps in the Federal Reserve System
To better understand the stalled progress of women in economics, we construct new data on women's representation and research output in one of the largest policy institutions—the Federal Reserve System. We document a slight increase in women’s representation over the past 20 years, in line with academic trends. We also document a significant gender gap in research output, especially for years in which economists have greater domestic responsibilities, but nearly absent gender gaps in policy output and career progression. This work complements existing research on women in academia, ...
Journal Article
Why Worry about Financial Exclusion?
Should policymakers aim to expand access to bank accounts? When financial exclusion is due to frictions that prevent banking from operating efficiently, intervention may be justified. Applying simple economic principles, we highlight possible frictions that may give rise to inefficient exclusion in the United States, and we assess their importance using insights from data and the academic and policy literature.
Journal Article
How the Pandemic Has Reshaped Economic Inclusion in the United States
The pandemic brought unusually large and novel changes to the US labor market. Some sectors lost half or nearly half of their employment; others moved their workforces to home settings. Some workers lost their jobs, some left their jobs temporarily, and some left the workforce altogether. These changes have affected different demographic groups differently. We investigate how the pandemic affected workers of different ages, racial or ethnic backgrounds, and gender and the degree to which these effects have persisted after a year of recovery.
Journal Article
Income Inequality Matters, but Mobility Is Just as Important
Concerns about rising income inequality are based on comparing income distributions over time. It is important to remember that such distributions are snapshots of a single year, and that the same households do not necessarily appear year after year in the same quintile of the distribution. Paying attention to mobility, as well as inequality, gives us a richer picture of the income possibilities for households over time. We document changes in a measure of income mobility over the past 40 years, a period in which income inequality has increased. We find a modest level of movement through the ...
Working Paper
Job Ladders and Earnings of Displaced Workers
Workers who suffer job displacement experience surprisingly large and persistent earnings losses. This paper proposes an explanation for this robust empirical puzzle in a model of search over match-quality with a significant job ladder. In addition to capturing the depth and persistence of displaced-worker-earnings losses, the model is able to match a) separation rates by tenure; b) the empirical decomposition of earnings losses into reduced wages and employment; c) observed wage dispersion; d) the pattern of employer-to-employer transitions after layoff, and e) the degree of serial ...
Journal Article
Universal CSAs in Illinois: Addressing the Racial Wealth Gap
In Angela Glover Blackwell?s essay in What It?s Worth, she talks about her childhood and how she was fortunate to have access to community assets that provide ?ladders for success.? While these assets created a pathway to financial security that included college for many in her community, she acknowledges that similar ?communities of opportunity? are not the reality for many families of color. In Illinois, there are significant disparities in opportunity between majority white communities and communities of color. According to the 2016 Illinois Poverty Report, poverty rates are two to three ...
Working Paper
Are America's Inner Cities Competitive? Evidence from the 2000s
In the years since Michael Porter?s paper about the potential competitiveness of inner cities there has been growing evidence of a residential resurgence in urban neighborhoods. Yet, there is less evidence on the competitiveness of inner cities for employment. We document the trends in net employment growth and find that inner cities gained over 1.8 million jobs between 2002 and 2011 at a rate comparable to suburban areas. We also find a significant number of inner cities are competitive over this period?increasing their share of metropolitan employment in 120 out of 281 MSAs. We also ...