The Economics of Identity and the Endogeneity of Race

Economic and social theorists have modeled race and ethnicity as a form of personal identity produced in recognition of the costliness of adopting and maintaining a specific identity. These models of racial and ethnic identity recognize that race and ethnicity is potentially endogenous because racial and ethnic identities are fluid. We look at the free African-American population in the mid-nineteenth century to investigate the costs and benefits of adopting alternative racial identities. We model the choice as an extensive-form game, where whites choose to accept or reject a separate mulatto identity and mixed race individuals then choose whether or not to adopt that mulatto identity. Adopting a mulatto identity generates pecuniary gains, but imposes psychic costs. Our empirical results imply that race is contextual and that there was a large pecuniary benefit to adopting a mixed-race identity.

Colorism and African American Wealth: Evidence from the Nineteenth-Century South

Black is not always black. Subtle distinctions in skin tone translate into significant differences in outcomes. Data on more than 15,000 households interviewed during the 1860 federal census exhibit sharp differences in wealth holdings between white, mulatto, and black households in the urban South. We document these differences, investigate the relationships between wealth and the recorded household characteristics, and decompose the wealth gaps into treatment and characteristic effects. In addition to higher wealth holdings of white households as compared to free African-Americans in general, there are distinct differences between both the characteristics of and wealth of free mulatto and black households, whether male- or female-headed. While black-headed households' mean predicted log wealth was only 20% of white-headed households', mulatto-headed households' was nearly 50% that of whites'. The difference between light- and dark-complexion is highly significant in semi-log wealth regressions. In the decomposition of this wealth differential, treatment effects play a large role in explaining the wealth gap between all subpopulation pairs.

Blending remote and local learning in the liberal arts

When designing a course offered during a small liberal arts college’s January Intersession, are there new ways to think about generating student demand? This may be particularly useful for courses with more-stringent pre-requisites satisfied by a limited number of students. Making connections to that small, passionate group can be particularly valuable but difficult to accomplish during the school year, and they may be particularly motivated by the opportunity to connect remotely. The course described in this presentation (Computational Simulation of Markets and Behavior) blended remote and on-campus access when it was offered during a three-week January 2016 session. Remote students participated in discussions during lecture and engaged in group work. They presented class projects to each other during their development, critiquing each other’s work and collaborating over the remote connections. Lecture incorporated conventional slides, whiteboard / blackboard, and iPad apps to deliver the content. Over the course’s compacted three week interim session, we began with all students connecting remotely and finished with all students local, with a mix of local and remote attendance during the middle week. Students and professor were able to successfully navigate the technological challenges for a valuable experience

Interfirm competition, intrafirm cannibalisation and product exit in the market for computer hard disk drives

Intrafirm ?cannibalisation? of a product?s demand by the firm?s own products is found to have a more robust and significant relationship to the probability of its withdrawal than does interfirm competition from other firms? products