This paper identifies an exogenous variation in post–Civil War policy to examine the effect of land reform on racial inequality. The Cherokee Nation, located in what is now Oklahoma, permitted slavery and joined the Confederacy in 1861. During postwar negotiations, the Cherokee Nation agreed to provide free land for its former slaves. Using linked data that follow former slaves in the Cherokee Nation from 1880 to 1900, I find that racial inequality was lower in the Cherokee Nation in both 1880 and 1900. Land and the associated increase in incomes may have facilitated investment in both physical and human capital.

Abstract This paper estimates neighborhood effects on adult labor market outcomes using the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) housing mobility experiment. We propose and implement a new strategy for identifying transition-specific effects that exploits identification of the unobserved component of a neighborhood choice model. Estimated local average treatment effects (LATEs) are large, result from moves between the first and second deciles of the national distribution of neighborhood quality, and pertain to a subpopulation of nine percent of program participants.