The In-Hospital Mortality Rates of Slaves and Freemen: Evidence from Touro Infirmary, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1855–1860

Using a rich sample of admission records from New Orleans Touro Infirmary, we examine the in-hospital mortality risk of free and enslaved patients. Despite a higher mortality rate in the general population, slaves were significantly less likely to die in the hospital than the whites. We analyze the determinants of in-hospital mortality at Touro using Oaxaca-type decomposition to aggregate our regression results. After controlling for differences in characteristics and maladies, we find that much of the mortality gap remains unexplained. In conclusion, we propose an alternative explanation for the mortality gap based on the selective hospital admission of slaves.hospital, slavery, Oaxaca-type decomposition, New Orleans, Touro

More for the poor is less for the poor : the politics of targeting

Standard economic analyses suggests that when the budget for redistribution is fixed, transfers should be targeted to (that is, means-tested for) those most in need. But both economists and political scientists have long recognized the possibility that targeting could undermine political support for redistribution, and hence reduce the available budget. The authors formalize this recognition, developing a simple economy in which both nontargeted (universally received) and targeted transfers are available. The policymaker chooses the share of the budget to be spent on each type of transfer while the budget is determined through majority voting. Their results are striking. If the policymaker ignores political feasibility and assumes that the budget is fixed, she will choose full targeting of transfers -in the process minimizing social welfare and the utility of the poor. By contrast, when the policymaker recognizes budgetary endogeneity, she will choose zero targeting, spending theentire budget on the universally received transfer. Social welfare, the budget for redistribution, and the utility of poor agents are all maximized in the resulting equilibrium.Environmental Economics&Policies,Services&Transfers to Poor,Health Economics&Finance,Economic Theory&Research,Poverty Impact Evaluation,Services&Transfers to Poor,Rural Poverty Reduction,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Safety Nets and Transfers

Does more for the poor mean less for the poor? The politics of tagging

Proposals aimed at improving the welfare of the poor often include indicator targeting, in which non-income characteristics (such as race, gender, or land ownership) that are correlated with income are used to target limited funds to groups likely to include a cincentration of the poor. Previous work shows that efficient use of a fixed budget for poverty reduction requires such targeting, either because agents'income cannot be observed or to reduce distortionary incentives arising from redistributive interventions. Inspite of this, the authors question the political viability of targeting. After constructing a model that is basically an extension of Akerlof's 1978 model of"tagging", they derive three main results: 1) Akerlof's result continues to hold: that, ignoring political considerations, not only will targeting be desirable but recipients of the targeted transfer will receive a greater total transfer than they would if targeting were not possible. 2) A classical social-choice analysis-in which agents vote simultaneously about the level of taxation and the degree of targeting-shows that positive levels of targeted transfers will not exist in equilibrium (an unsurprising finding, given Plott's 1968 theorem). It also shows that a voting equilibrium often will exist with no targeting but with non-zero taxation and redistribution. 3) In a game in which the policymaker chooses the degree of targeting while voters choose the level of taxation, the redistributive efficiency gains from tagging may well fail to outweigh the resulting reduction in funds available for redistribution. These results may be extended readily to account for altruistic agents. The authors stress that even when these results hold, the alternative to targeted transfers - a universally received lump-sum grant financed through a proportional tax - will nonetheless be supported politically and will be quite progressive relative to the pretransfer income distribution.Economic Theory&Research,Services&Transfers to Poor,Poverty Impact Evaluation,Environmental Economics&Policies,Poverty Monitoring&Analysis,Services&Transfers to Poor,Rural Poverty Reduction,Environmental Economics&Policies,Poverty Impact Evaluation,Safety Nets and Transfers

Preserving Slave Families for Profit: Traders' Incentives and Pricing in the New Orleans Slave Market

We investigate determinants of slave family discounts in the New Orleans slave market. We find large price discounts for families unrelated to scale effects, childcare costs, legal restrictions, or transport costs. We posit that because family members voluntarily cared for each other, sellers sometimes found it advantageous to keep families together (when families included needy or dependent members). Evidence from ship manifests carrying slaves for sale in New Orleans provides direct evidence for selectivity bias in explaining slave family discounts. Children likely to have been shipped with their mothers are 1 to 2 inches shorter than other children

Design, ancillary testing, analysis and fabrication data for the advanced composite stabilizer for Boeing 737 aircraft. Volume 1: Technical summary

The horizontal stabilizer of the 737 transport was redesigned. Five shipsets were fabricated using composite materials. Weight reduction greater than the 20% goal was achieved. Parts and assemblies were readily produced on production-type tooling. Quality assurance methods were demonstrated. Repair methods were developed and demonstrated. Strength and stiffness analytical methods were substantiated by comparison with test results. Cost data was accumulated in a semiproduction environment. FAA certification was obtained

Full-scale testing, production and cost analysis data for the advanced composite stabilizer for Boeing 737 aircraft, volume 2

The development, testing, production activities, and associated costs that were required to produce five-and-one-half advanced-composite stabilizer shipsets for Boeing 737 aircraft are defined and discussed