Brooks Robinson

• Co-Contributor at BlackEconomics.org

Established in 1930, the Nation of Islam (NOI) offered uplift to the wellbeing of Black Americans. Its charismatic leader, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, articulated how membership in the NOI would improve the well-being of Black Americans. We consider the impact of NOI membership on several measures of individual well-being. Using data from the fi...

Afrodescendants’ position at the lower-end of a broad range of economic metrics in the US was reinforced during the Great Recession of 2008-2009. Social groups in such a position are expected to use all available resources to improve their plight — including religion. A key component of the Afrodescendant religious tradition (in and outside of reli...

It is common knowledge that the characteristics of Black-owned American businesses differ from the characteristics of businesses owned by other ethnic groups in the United States. Specifically, there are fewer Black businesses per capita; Black businesses experience lower levels of gross receipts; and Black businesses are less likely to be large en...

This Report Brief features an analysis of Black America’s employment growth by industry over the period 2000-2012, which is not systematically correlated with the fastest growing industries on a real value added basis. In other words, Black Americans are essentially locked out of many of the high growth industries that reflect the highest incomes....

Pay to Let US Go is a monograph that explores the benefits provided and the costs imposed by Afrodescendants on the American society. Benefits and costs are analyzed in broad and narrow contexts. The focus is on benefits and costs to US governments: Federal, State, and Local. Estimates are prepared of the 2010 incomes earned and taxes paid by Afrod...

The U.S. Government has detailed historical knowledge of income tax compliance differences by categories of income taxpayers. Wage and salary earners know that information returns precede their tax filing with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and they respond with high-level compliance. Because shareholders are the residual claimants for corpora...

This working paper builds on two key facts of history. First, ethnic groups that occupy a common geographical territory and reflect a history of one group exploiting or oppressing the other group naturally find their way to violent conflict — unless there is an escape mechanism. Second, there is usually one key incident or person (the “power of one...

Why do Black American consumers continue to reflect higher rates of church attendance than the remainder of the U.S. population, and continue to obtain a significant amount of services from Black churches? When we hypothesize that the implicit prices of services that are produced by Black churches are higher than the price of low-cost substitute se...

“Rational economic agents” making optimal choices, such as shifting to less expensive products, is a fundamental paradigm for theoretical and applied economics. This requires accurate and unbiased economic information on prices. Since the mid-1990s, several nations have switched to estimation methods for price indices that improve the accounting fo...

There is only one sizeable internationally recognized displaced group that is not already linked to land to which it has a claim: e.g., the Romani people of Europe (Gypsies). History reveals that an important goal for displaced groups is to identify a homeland and to establish a nation state. While nation formation is a very distant or nonexistent...

This paper explores the actuarily unfair nature of Social Security benefits that are extended to African Americans, particularly African-American males. It includes a microsimulation that estimates the disparity in net Social Security wealth that is produced by the current system. It suggests that the system should be modified to ameliorate the dis...

From the very outset, a primary role of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) was to prepare teachers to instruct America’s blacks, who had very limited sources of educational training. Many of these institutions were known as “normal schools” or “teachers colleges.” It stands to reason that certain institutional advantages should ha...

"Why has the black unemployment rate in the United States been more than twice that of whites over the past three decades? This article builds on earlier efforts to explain this conundrum using a discrimination framework, but it refocuses the explanation onto indirect cultural factors that motivate discriminatory behavior. Consistent with a call fo...

In a previous paper, the authors took the first step in their research on measuring the education function of government by estimating real output measures (Fraumeni, et. al. 2004). In this paper, chain-type Fisher quantity indexes for those output measures are calculated to be more consistent with Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) methodology and...

In 1988, comedian Eddie Murphy created quite a stir and considerable good fortune for himself with the movie “Coming to America,” which concerned an African emigrating to America. The title of this paper is a spoof on that movie because the paper inquires about prospects for Black Americans emigrating to Africa. At the beginning of the 21st century...

This paper is different from the line of economics papers that discuss the downside to a particular Black American vulnerability by citing statistics and models that confirm a widely recognized reality. It presents a selected catalog of economic vulnerabilities that trap Black Americans in an area of vulnerability or push them below the threshold i...

This paper analyzes the political economy ofoutsourcing by 16 federal bureaus during 1981-96. Inan era of restricted budgets and budget balancing, thepaper questions why federal bureaus did not exploitfully the efficiencies of outsourcing. It proves thatfederal bureaus can achieve technical and costefficiency through outsourcing when contracts can...