TRENDS IN RANKINGS OF ECONOMICS DEPARTMENTS IN THE U.S.: AN UPDATE

Economics departments in the U.S. are ranked based on (1) the number of pages published in thirty-six economics journals, (2) publications in five of the top journals, (3) output per faculty member, and (4) an index of the concentration of research in a department. Evidence shows that the top twenty departments have generally retained their positions since the 1970s, but rather large changes have occurred in departments ranked from 240 to 100. An "Economists Hall of Fame" is developed listing the top fifty individual producers of research in the thirty-six journal set and the top five journals.     

BIRTHS, DEATHS, AND MARRIAGES IN THE U.S. COMMERCIAL BANKING INDUSTRY

Regulatory change not seen since the Great Depression swept the U.S. banking industry beginning in the early 1980s and culminated with the Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act of 1994. This article examines whether deregulation affected new charter (birth), failure (death), and merger (marriage) rates of U.S. commercial banks from 1978 to 2004 after controlling for bank performance and state economic activity. We find strong evidence that intrastate and interstate deregulation stimulated marriages, but not births or deaths. Finally, temporal causality tests show that mergers temporally lead to new charters and that failures lead to mergers (a demonstration effect) . ( JEL G21, L51)     

USE, ESTEEM, AND PROFIT IN VOLUNTARY PROVISION: TOLL ROADS IN CALIFORNIA, 1850—1902

Early Californians took stock in toll roads for a variety of reasons: use of the road, esteem of fellows, and profits from stock. Whatever the motivation, in operation all toll road companies felt the profit motive. This paper presents a historical survey of voluntary organizations taking the stock-corporation form. These cases demonstrate how various motivations and incentives intermingled and supported one another in the days before the corporation was legally bifurcated into either "for-profit" or "not-for-profit" enterprise.     

TRADE,GEOGRAPHY AND THE SKILL PREMIUM IN U.S. MANUFACTURING

A number of studies have suggested that countries (or regions) with access to larger markets have higher wages. In this paper, we examine whether access to larger markets affects skilled and unskilled workers differently. We develop a model relating two key measures of market size, market and supplier access, to industry value added prices. We then estimate the effects of growth in these measures on factor returns in U.S. manufacturing industries between 1984 and 1996. We find that growth in these measures can explain around 5% of the rise in the skill premium over the sample period. (JEL F12, F16, L60)     

BLACK, SINGLE FEMALE-HEADED FAMILY FORMATION IN LARGE U.S. CITIES

Using a sample of the largest 100 cities, multivariate analysis of black, single femaleheaded families tests hypotheses derived from competing political paradigmatic explanations of marital disruption. Results show sex-ratio, black male and female employment, and access to AFDC predict the likelihood of black, single female-headed family formation. The conclusion explores public policy implications.     

THE IRRUPTION OF TRANCE IN CONTEMPORARY YORUBA THEATRE: THEATRE,WITCHCRAFT, AND SOCIAL FRAGMENTATION IN LAGOS,NIGERIA

The golden age of Yoruba folk opera, Yoruba travelling theatre, and Yoruba theatre is over and the brightly coloured trucks carrying the companies that cruised the Nigerian Federation up to the middle of the 1980s have certainly long since been dismantled. Although many actors, musicians, and directors have indeed moved from theatre to the flourishing home-video industry, a community of actors continues to present live performances that can be categorized as “neotraditional.” This genre of Yoruba theatre is undergoing a crisis in the context of an unrelenting economic recession in Nigeria that began in the early 1980s. This situation has released tensions that lead to a real and sadly all-too-justifiable sense of insecurity and to proliferating accounts of witchcraft attacks. The outcome has been a rise in violence manifested in the unleashing of the powers of witchcraft and enflaming relations between small rival groups hitherto unified under the sway of a salaried and—at least until the beginning of the 1980s—optimistic middle class. Yoruba neotraditional theatre that represents deities on stage that belong to “an invisible world” is playing with fire and, by conjuring up the powers of witchcraft, has in turn itself been bewitched.     

FAMILY, COMMUNITY, AND LIFESTYLE: ADOLESCENT VICTIMIZATION IN HELSINKI

The proximate correlates of adolescent victimization are well documented in the literature. The purpose of our research is to examine the more fundamental sources of this outcome. Focusing on two basic social contexts—the family and the residential community—we develop a theoretical model and test it empirically against a multilevel data set on juveniles living in Helsinki. Consistent with our hypothesis, we find that the family context is an important determinant of violent victimization. Much of this effect is mediated by involvement in delinquent lifestyles. We also find support for the assumption that community context matters to the risk of victimization independently of the family context and individual-level risk factors. Our research underscores the need for a multilevel approach in explanations of violent victimization.