Her research focuses on institutions affecting racial stratification, including education, labor markets, and the criminal justice system. Pager's current research has involved a series of field experiments studying discrimination against minorities and ex-offenders in the low-wage labor market. Her book, Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration (University of Chicago, 2007), investigates the racial and economic consequences of large scale imprisonment for contemporary U.S. labor markets. As a separate line of work, Pager spent a year in Paris on a Fulbright grant studying changes in crime policy and its relationship to patterns of immigration and ethnic tension in contemporary France. Pager holds Masters Degrees from Stanford University and the University of Cape Town, and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.