The Socioeconomic Status of Hispanic New Yorkers: Current Trends and Future Prospects

Presents data showing the major demographic and socioeconomic changes in the Hispanic population of New York during the 1990s. Examines the trends in income, poverty, labor force status, and other economic and demographic indicators

Democracy, governance and economic growth: Theory and evidence

This paper examines how democracy affects long-run growth by influencing the quality of governance. Empirical evidence is presented first showing that measures of the quality of governance are substantially higher in more democratic countries. A general equilibrium, endogenous growth model is then built to show how a governance improving democracy raises growth. In this model, stronger democratic institutions influence governance by constraining the actions of corrupt officials. Reducing corruption, in turn, stimulates technological change and spurs economic growth. Empirical evidence is presented showing that democracy is in fact a significant determinant of total factor productivity (TFP) growth between 1960 and 1990 in a cross-section of countries. But this contribution occurs only insofar as stronger democratic institutions are associated with greater quality of governance

The Climate for Business Development and Employment Growth in Puerto Rico

Employment rates in Puerto Rico range from 55 to 65 percent of U.S. rates during the past thirty years. This huge employment shortfall holds for men and women, cuts across all education groups, and is deeper for persons without a college degree. The shortfall is concentrated in the private sector, especially labor-intensive industries that rely heavily on less educated workers. Motivated by these facts, we identify several factors that undermine employment growth and business development, including high minimum wage requirements, a history of tax incentives for capital-intensive activities, a host of regulatory entry barriers, and a business climate in which profitability and survival too often rest on the ability to secure favors from the government,. We pay close attention to the permitting process whereby the government oversees and regulates construction and real estate development projects, the commercial use of equipment and facilities, and the periodic renewal of various business licenses. Based on interviews with experts and participants in the permitting process, and supplemented by other sources, we compile evidence that the permitting process is excessively slow and costly, fraught with uncertainty, subject to capricious outcomes, susceptible to corruption, and prone to manipulation by business rivals and special interest groups.

Economic Integration and Endogenous Growth

In a world with two similar, developed economies, economic integration can cause a permanent increase in the worldwide rate of growth. Starting from a position of isolation, closer integration can be achieved by increasing trade in goods or by increasing flows of ideas. We consider two models with different specifications of the research and development sector that is the source of growth. Either form of integration can increase the long-run rate of growth if it encourages the worldwide exploitation of increasing returns to scale in the research and development sector.

International Trade with Endogenous Technological Change

To explain why trade restrictions sometimes speed up worldwide growth and sometimes slow it down, we exploit an analogy with the theory of consumer behavior. substitution effects make demand curves slope down, but income effects can increase or decrease the slope, and can sometimes overwhelm the substitution effect. We decompose changes in the worldwide growth rate into two effects (integration and redundancy) that unambiguously slow down growth, and a third effect (allocation) that can either speed it up or slow it down. We study two types of trade restrictions to illustrate the use of this decomposition. The first is across the board restrictions on traded goods in an otherwise perfect market. The second is selective protection of knowledge-intensive goods in a world with imperfect intellectual property rights. In both examples, we show that for trade between similar regions such as Europe and North America, the first two effects dominate; starting from free trade, restrictions unambiguously reduce worldwide growth.

An analysis of sample selection bias in cross-country growth regressions

Sample sizes in cross-country growth regressions vary greatly, depending on data availability. But if the selected samples are not representative of the underlying population of nations in the world, ordinary least squares coefficients (OLS) may be biased. This paper re-examines the determinants of economic growth in cross-sectional samples of countries utilizing econometric techniques that take into account the selective nature of the samples. The regression results of three major contributions to the empirical growth literature by Mankiw-Romer-Weil (1992), Barro (1991) and Mauro (1995), are considered and re-estimated using a bivariate selectivity model. Our analysis suggests that sample selection bias could significantly change the results of empirical growth analysis, depending on the specific sample utilized. In the case of the Mankiw-Romer-Weil paper, the value and statistical significance of some of the estimated coefficients change drastically when adjusted for sample selectivity. But the results obtained by Barro and Mauro are robust to sample selection bias

Dominican New Yorkers: A Socioeconomic Profile, 1997

This Directory provides a list of US-based scholars working on Dominican topics

Dominicans in the United States: A Socioeconomic Profile, 2000

This study provides a statistical account of the situation of Dominicans living in the United States using the 1990 U.S. Census data

Dominican New Yorkers: A Socioeconomic Profile, 1990

Published in collaboration with the Institute for Urban and Minority Education (IUME) at Teachers College, Columbia University, this is the first academic effort to provide a statistical account, using the 1980 and 1990 U.S. Census data, of the current situation of Dominicans living in New York