José de Sousa published his paper “Labor mobility and racial discrimination”, co-authored with Pierre Deschamps, in the European Economic Review 135, 2021.
Abstract: Racial wage discrimination can proliferate in labor markets with large frictions because workers facing discrimination find it difficult to relocate. We present evidence of the interaction between frictions and discrimination in the English Premier League, the top tier of English football, using the 1995 Bosman ruling as an exogenous shifter. Before the ruling, wage discrimination resulted in teams with more black players outperforming competitors with equivalent payrolls. The decrease in frictions associated with the ruling allows players to escape discrimination by relocating.