UNDERPAID and OVERWORKED: MEASURING THE EFFECT OF IMPERFECT INFORMATION ON WAGES

This paper investigates the degree of shortfall between the wages workers earn and what they could earn assuming perfect or costless information in the labor market. We use the stochastic frontier regression technique to estimate the degree of shortfall found in wages on an individual basis. The paper tests, in addition, a number of hypotheses supplied by search theory in this context. The results generally confirm the propositions from search theory and indicate that, on the average, worker wages fall short of worker potential wages by approximately 10 percent.     

MEASURING CRACK COCAINE AND ITS IMPACT

Numerous social indicators turned negative for Blacks in the 1980s and rebounded a decade later. We explore whether crack cocaine explains these patterns. Absent a direct measure, we construct a crack prevalence index using multiple proxies. Our index reproduces spatial and temporal patterns described in ethnographic accounts of the crack epidemic. It explains much of the 1980s rise in Black youth homicide and more moderate increases in adverse birth outcomes. Although our index remains high through the 1990s, crack's deleterious social impact fades. Changes over time in behavior, crack markets, and the user population may have mitigated crack's damaging impacts. (JEL K42, J15, I30)     

“Prelude to Imperialism”1: Whiteness and Chinese Exclusion in the Reimagining of the United States

Abstract The debates around Chinese exclusion were part of a racial reimagining of the United States after the Civil War. These debates show how the Exclusion Acts were the “prelude to imperialism” overseas. By employing competing racisms toward Chinese migrants, disparate groups of whites created contradictory stereotypes of the Chinese, such as the “coolie” and “celestial.” Focusing on working‐class whites’ messy and violent racism toward the Chinese has contributed to ignoring more paternalistic “civilized” racism of missionaries, reformers, politicians, and capitalists that led to more lasting stereotypes of Chinese, such as the “model minority.” This study analyzes how these racisms simultaneously contributed to the transformation of the racial state and the extension of imperialist policies, while they disciplined workers of all races, Chinese immigrants, Filipinos, and whites.     

COMPARING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF REGULATION AND PRO‐SOCIAL EMOTIONS TO ENHANCE COOPERATION: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE FROM FISHING COMMUNITIES IN COLOMBIA

This paper presents the results from a series of framed field experiments conducted in fishing communities off the Caribbean coast of Colombia. The goal is to investigate the relative effectiveness of exogenous regulatory pressure and pro‐social emotions in promoting cooperative behavior in a public goods context. The random public revelation of an individual's contribution and its consequences for the rest of the group leads to significantly higher public good contributions and social welfare than regulatory pressure, even under regulations that are designed to motivate fully efficient contributions. (JEL C93, H41, Q20, Q28)     

Baseball in England: A Case of Prolonged Cultural Resistance

Abstract  The concern within this paper is to examine how, notwithstanding the growing global power of the USA and the declining power of Britain over a period of fifty years from 1874 to 1924, a series of attempts made by American entrepreneurs to establish the game of baseball in England were, to all intents and purposes, rebuffed. On four separate occasions during this period various American baseball entrepreneurs put on exhibition matches of baseball. On each occasion, baseball was given short shrift within the English press. We provide an empirical account before engaging in some theoretical reflections utilising a figurational sociological approach.     

GEOGRAPHIC DIFFERENCES IN U.S. UNEMPLOYMENT RATES: A VARIANCE DECOMPOSITION APPROACH

This paper analyzes the determinants of the geographic dispersion of unemployment rates. The model presented here recognizes that structural labor market relationships differ across areas and that area unemployment rates and some of the explanatory variables are determined simultaneously. Most importantly, the methodology introduced here provides an estimate of the impact of each of the explanatory variables on the overall dispersion of unemployment rates, allowing comparison of several competing hypotheses that purport to explain why areas differ so widely in terms of their unemployment rates. The empirical results indicate that inter-area differences in product market demand and in sensitivity to changes in conditions in the product market are the most important factors accounting for geographic differences in unemployment rates. More generally, the results indicate that unemployment rates differ widely across areas not so much because areas differ in terms of the underlying characteristics that determine unemployment rates but because areas are so heterogeneous with respect to labor market structure.     

The Impact of Family Size on Wealth Accumulation in Rural Thailand

Abstract. We examine the effect of socio-economic covariates on infant mortality in China in the 1980s, particularly the role of previous birth interval and mother's education, using an event history approach with data from the 1988 Two per Thousand Fertility Survey. We use a Bayesian model averaging strategy that takes account of model uncertainty as well as parameter uncertainty. A standard stepwise logistic regression analysis finds no statistically significant relationship between the preceding birth interval and infant survival after controlling for socio-demographic factors, but this finding is reversed when the Bayesian model averaging approach is adopted. However, the method finds less support than a standard stepwise approach for the role of mother's education. We consider the model-fitting criterion of predictive power when applied to out-of-sample observations, and show that Bayesian model averaging outperforms the stepwise approach. We conclude that, even with large sample sizes, the interpretation of results can vary substantially according to model selection and fitting criteria.