ABSTRACT
At its core, the human capital approach to race is quite simple. It is a skill-based theory that asserts that if you want to understand the racial wage gap and the way it is changing, you must understand why the races differ in marketable skills and how skill differences change over time. In part, allegiance to theories determines research emphasis and dictates where one decides to devote scarce research energies and resources. Those of us with a human capital emphasis spend much of our research time worrying about how to more accurately measure skills and how markets translate those skills into earnings. In essence, the human capital approach is a belief that skills matter. Economists who attend different churches are betting that exploring the reasons for the lack of mobility between sectors or the constraints imposed by institutions represents the key to further progress on the economics of race.
