Racial disparities in labor markets and wealth

Quantitative macroeconomic models of how hiring discrimination, wealth differences and monetary policy produce and sustain Black–White gaps in unemployment, wages and wealth, in steady state and over the business cycle.

• Macroeconomics of Racial Disparities: Discrimination, Labor Market, and Wealth
  Srinivasan Murali, Guanyi Yang · Working paper, 2026In a search-and-matching model with prejudiced and non-prejudiced firms calibrated to the U.S., hiring discrimination accounts for about 57 percent of the Black–White unemployment gap, 48 percent of the average wage gap and 16 percent of the median wealth gap; removing it raises Black workers’ welfare by 12.9 percent and aggregate welfare by 1.5 percent.