Volume 8, Number 4 (Fall) 1973
Flanagan, Robert J. 1973. "Racial Wage Discrimination and Employment Segregation." Journal of Human Resources 8(4):456-471.
This paper develops empirical tests of the utility analysis approach to wage discrimination within a given occupation. In one section, the general equilibrium prediction of negatively sloped relative racial demand curves is tested using cross-section regressions. In another section, actual employment segregation of whites and blacks is compared with the extent of segregation that would be expected on a purely random basis and the extent of segregation predicted by the stringent version of the utility analysis model. The evidence indicates that the employment segregation prediction of the utility analysis model is doubtful, but clarifies the influence of ethnic groups and economic development on racial wage differentials.
The author is in the Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago, and the Department of Economics, University of California, Berkeley. The author is grateful to O. Ashenfelter, J. Burton, P. Pashigian, and participants in the Labor Workshop of the University of Chicago for critical comments and suggestions on an earlier draft. He also is indebted to David Safir and John Turner for research assistance and to the Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago, for financial support of this research.
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