Samuel L. Myers Jr

University of Minnesota Twin Cities | UMN · Roy Wilkins Center for Human Relations and Social Justice

This essay examines the extent to which research on the economics of race and crime produced by Black economists or published in the flagship journal of the organization of Black economists, the Review of Black Political Economy (RBPE), is undervalued by mainstream economics. We use modern bibliometric methods to test for citation biases in the eco...

In the United States (US), Black-particularly Black female-healthcare workers are more likely to hold occupations with high job demand, low job control with limited support from supervisors or coworkers and are more vulnerable to job loss than their white counterparts. These work-related factors increase the risk of hypertension. This study examine...

This chapter investigates the relationship between decline in racial disparities in foster care and female imprisonment. Growth in female imprisonment has been identified as a determinant of growth in foster care populations, but race-specific relationships between them have not been examined. Using a state-level panel of yearly data covering the p...

Racial differences in effort at work, if they exist, can potentially explain race-based wage/earnings disparities in the labor market. The authors estimate specifications of time spent on non-work activities at work by Black and White males and females with data from the American Time Use Survey. Estimates reveal that trivially small differences oc...

Existing research on funding disparities between historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and non-HBCUs primarily focuses on government funding and pays little attention to foundation giving. This paper helps to fill this gap by examining the effects of funding by the Charles Koch Foundation—a major funder of economics research in the U...

This article uses baseline data from an observational study to estimate the determinants of racial and gender disparities in obesity. Samples of low-income workers in Minneapolis and Raleigh reveal that respondents in Minneapolis have lower body mass indices (BMIs) than respondents in Raleigh. There are large, statistically significant race and gen...

In The Growth of Incarceration in the United States, the National Research Council documents the large and persistent racial disparities in imprisonment that accompanied the more than quadrupling of the U.S. incarceration rate since the 1980s. Largely unnoticed by policy makers and opinion leaders in recent years is an unprecedented decrease in the...

Minimum wage laws are a promising policy lever to promote health equity, but few rigorous evaluations have tested whether and how minimum wage policy affects health outcomes. This paper describes an ongoing difference-in-difference study evaluating the health effects of the 2017 Minneapolis Minimum Wage Ordinance, which incrementally increases the...

A reflection on the changes in research on race and crime in the economics profession.

Revisiting the work of the Kerner Commission after 50 years offers the opportunity to explore two unresolved research and policy issues. First, many of the racial disparities that promoted widespread disorder and violent protests in 1967-1968 remain today. Second, there is the embarrassment of not having any African American researchers on the tech...

This paper estimates the benefits of eliminating racial disparities in mortality rates and work weeks lost due to illness. Using data from the American Community Survey (2005–2007) and Minnesota vital statistics (2011–2015), we explore economic methodologies for estimating the costs of health disparities. The data reveal large racial disparities in...

Objectives To examine the change in the racial disparity in drowning in Florida from 1970 to 2015 and to analyse the contextual factors associated with white, black and Hispanic drowning rates in Florida from 2007 to 2015. Methods Our outcome variable is county-level annual drowning rates by race, ethnicity, sex and age group. We computed county-l...

Female family headship has strong implications for endemic poverty in the United States. Consequently, it is imperative to explore the chief factors that contribute to this problem. Departing from prior literature that places significant weight on welfare-incentive effects, our study highlights the role of male marriageability in explaining the pre...

This paper utilizes data from the 2002 Chinese Household Income Project to estimate the labor market return to graduating from college relative to high school. Parameter estimates of heterogeneous treatment effects reveal that for minorities, the average treatment effect of earning a baccalaureate degree from colleges/universities ranked good and v...

Harvard University’s Economics Department produced some of the leading African American economists between World War I and the Korean War. This essay explores the factors that contributed to this accomplishment and documents the career trajectories of the six blacks who obtained the Doctorate in Economics from Harvard University during the period 1...

This paper provides evidence of an inverse relationship between competitive swimming rates and drowning rates using Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data on fatal drowning rates and membership rates from USA Swimming, the governing organization of competitive swimming in the United States. Tobit and Poisson regression models are est...

This paper investigates the distributional characteristics of racial differences in mathematics achievement, with particular attention to the potential influence of unexplained, and possibly unwarranted, racial differentials in rates of school suspension. It is well known that black students consistently score lower than whites on achievement tests...

Analysis of Banking Practices Based on 2008 - 2013 HMDA & CRA data Minneapolis & St.Paul Metropolitan Area

Research has found wide disparities in loan denial rates among different racial/ ethnic groups. Two competing explanations for these gaps arise. One argument is that these disparities result from underlying racial disparities in credit worthiness. A competing view is that the disparities arise from a pattern of racial discrimination among mortgage...

An Introduction to the volume. Special Edition: Review of Black Political Economy. December, 2012. The Political Economy of Race and Ethnicity in China.

The article, "Survivalist Entrepreneurship Among Urban Blacks During the Great Depression: A Test of the Disadvantage Theory of Business Enterprise" (2000) by Robert L. Boyd is critiqued. Boyd attempted to show that joblessness during the Depression caused urban U.S. blacks to develop an identity as "survivalist entrepreneurs" and to become self em...

This article provides estimates of the impacts of a race-neutral programme called an Emerging Small Business Enterprise (ESBE) Programme in New Jersey in 2003–2004 on women- and minority-owned contractors. We show that although women- and minority-owned firms conceptually benefit from ESBE set-asides, they do not benefit as much as non-Disadvantage...

Purpose: To examine how efforts and policies to increase diversity affect the relative representation of women and of minority groups within medicine and related science fields. Method: The authors of this report used data from the Current Population Survey March Supplement (a product of the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics...

This paper models racialized perceptions of child welfare workers and tests the hypothesis that these perceptions contribute to the racial disproportionality in reported and/or substantiated child maltreatment. A method is adopted which captures the salient features of racial stereotypes deriving from visual representations of neglectful situations...

Women and minorities are generally underrepresented in science research careers. To remedy the underrepresentation, policy makers have thus far crafted solutions based on what is known as the pipeline model which assumes a linear progression from high school to university to the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) workforce. Acc...

This paper sketches the broad experience of black-white earnings disparities in the United States over the course of the business cycle, comparing them to disparities between urban minorities and Han in China. The patterns differ between the USA and China, warranting a more detailed look at the dynamics of racial earnings inequality in the USA. We...

Introduction The opening of the Chinese economy in 1978 by Deng Xiaoping ushered in an era of significant economic growth (Chow 1993). During the following thirty years, gross domestic production expanded, the manufacturing sector grew, and exports to the outside world skyrocketed. Much of this dramatic growth has been attributed to capital accumul...

There is an inherent tension between efficiency and equity in justifying the implementation of diversity initiatives. The economics literature points to both costs and benefits associated with efforts to create diversity in the workforce, in organizations, and within communities. Three illustrations are provided of the tensions between equity and e...

There is an inherent tension between cost containment and expansion of coverage for the uninsured. African Americans disproportionately benefit from expanded health care options but they also bear a disproportionate burden in attempts to control costs. This recognition justifies a race-conscious analysis of health policy changes that appear race-ne...

Federal guidelines require that public entities receiving federal transit authority (FTA) funds take affirmative steps to allocate funds to disadvantaged business enterprises (DBEs). Business firms owned and operated by women and/or racial minority group members are presumptively classified as disadvantaged. To assure that the affirmative efforts t...

Economic Disparities: Causes and TrendsThe Widening of the Racial Earnings GapDirections for Future ResearchConclusion

Recent research has called into question theoretical and empirical findings demonstrating a deterrent effect of punishment. Also challenged has been the view that improved employment opportunities help to reduce participation in illegitimate activities. This research note summarizes newly published econometric findings revealing that better wages a...

Using data from 1996, 1998, and 1999 Minnesota comprehensive statewide testing of eighth graders, we examine whether Black students perform worse than White students because Blacks are more likely to attend high-poverty schools. We find the impacts of school poverty on Black students' test scores are miniscule. The results decompose aggregate racia...

This paper examines the issue of racism in economic research. Black and non-black scholars do see the world differently. Black authors are 13% more likely to report a finding of racial discrimination against blacks. Additionally, among the profession as a whole, there is a continuous long-term trend against published studies finding racial discrimi...

Do the poor pay more for food? To answer this question, this study was conducted to provide an empirical analysis of grocery store access and prices across inner city and suburban communities within the Minneapolis and St. Paul metropolitan area. The comparison among different types of grocers and geographic areas is drawn from a survey of approxim...

This chapter addresses the relationship between crime and lack of entrepreneurial opportunities by examining the connection between self-admitted drug dealing and labor force behavior. It uses prison data from California, Michigan, and Texas to provide a basis for examining the characteristics of self-described drug dealers. Quantitative measures o...

The conventional wisdom is that African-Americans, Hispanics, and American Indians are underrepresented among faculty in postsecondary institutions because they are underrepresented among Ph.D. recipients. Thus, the putative solution to the problem of minority faculty underrepresentation is to increase the supply of minority Ph.D.’s. In our book, F...

This article examines conflicting visions of the racial composition of the maltreated populations. The National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) data shows Blacks are overrepresented among reported and substantiated abuse and neglect cases, while the National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS) shows no apparent overreprese...

Using data from Minnesota for 2000, we show that measures of discrimination in maltreatment substantiation are inflated by a failure to disaggregate counties with large minority populations from those with small minority populations. Racial disparities in substantiation rates, conditional upon reports to child protective service workers, are not hu...

Economists understand racial discrimination to mean differential treatment of identically situated individuals of different races. While this conceptualization permits detection and measurement of racially disparate market and nonmarket outcomes (Myers, 1993), it leaves unanswered the questions of how and why such differential treatment might arise...

Policy analysis techniques emphasize the tension between efficiency and equity in public decision-making (Friedman; 1984, 2002). This tension is aptly illustrated by the problem of racial profiling. The following case study and accompanying problem set help to underscore the difficulty of making public choices that pit cost-effectiveness or efficie...

Modern policy analysis training largely ignores race as a substantive area of inquiry. Many significant race-related topics in contemporary policy have escaped the attention of professionals in the APPAM community. The tools and techniques of moder policy analysis-particularly those that emphasize the tension between equity and efficiency-certainly...

This article examines the myth of bad credit in the Black, community. Historically, Blacks have had higher savings rates and lower use of credit than Whites. Discrimination in lending led to an aversion to credit. Later, Blacks believed their credit to be bad, even among many better qualified Black, loan applicants. The authors find that there is n...

The decade of the 1990s represents one of the longest periods of sustained prosperity in the post-World War II era. Unemployment rates have fallen to unprecedented sustained lows. A "New economy" of highly technical occupations relies heavily on a virtual world where paper transactions increasingly are becoming obsolete. This has contributed to phe...

This article examines racial differences in travel time to work. We use 1980 and 1990 Census Public Use Microdata Samples (PUMS) for Chicago and Los Angeles to estimate the relation of personal and household characteristics to commute time. Between 1980 and 1990, mean commute times increased more for whites than for blacks in both cities, narrowing...

This article examines the myth of bad credit in the Black community. Historically, Blacks have had higher savings rates and lower use of credit than Whites. Discrimination in lending led to an aversion to credit. Later, Blacks believed their credit to be bad, even among many better qualified Black loan applicants. The authors find that there is no...

The Australian policy of reconciliation between indigenous people and non-indigenous settlers is seen as a precursor to recent American efforts to solve its race relations problems via a policy of racial reconciliation. The empirical context of the problem of racial inequality in Australia is presented and the theoretical context of the Australian...

This paper offers a test of the relative wage version of the efficiency wage hypothesis – that firms are able to improve worker productivity by paying workers a wage premium. Psychologists believe work effort reflects motivation that is governed by a feature of personality referred to as locus of control. Measures of locus of control are available...

Do the poor pay more for food? To answer this question, this study was conducted to provide an empirical analysis of grocery store access and prices across inner city and suburban communities within the Minneapolis and St. Paul metropolitan area. The comparison among different types of grocers and geographic areas is drawn from a survey of approxim...

This mixed-method study, conducted in eight Midwestern states with the participation of 487 campuses, focuses on the workplace environment for faculty of color with particular attention to problems of recruitment, retention, and development. The findings emphasize the need to persevere in efforts to diversify higher education faculty.

This article tests the hypothesis that judicial arbitrariness dominated alimony or child support appeals in the pre-no-fault era by analyzing data on all alimony and child support appeals in the District of Columbia from 1950 through 1980. Censored regression analysis is used to isolate the impacts of race and morals grounds for divorce on changes...

In her study of occupational segregation in the United States using the 1960 Census, Barbara R. Bergmann found black males with low levels of education more concentrated in low-skill service and laborer occupations than white males and virtually excluded from higher status occupations. Utilizing a crowding index which, similar to Bergmann's, contro...

One explanation for the widening of racial earnings gaps among family heads during the 1980s is that black families were increasingly headed by females during that period. This explanation is tested using data on black and white family heads in 1976 and 1985 from the Institute for Research on Poverty’s Current Population Survey. Log-earnings equati...

This paper explores the relationship between various measures of prior victimization and indicators of both the perceived victimization risk and fear of crime. Equations are specified and estimated both for the fear of crime/perception of risk and for prior victimization. Since prior victimizations are exogenous to the determination of the current...

One explanation for the widening of racial earnings gaps among family heads during the 1980s is that black families were increasingly headed by females during that period. This explanation is tested using data on black and white family heads in 1976 and 1985 from the Institute for Research on Poverty's Current Population Survey. Log‐earnings equati...

This paper explores the relationship between various measures of prior victimization and indicators of both the perceived victimization risk and fear of crime. Equations are specified and estimated both for the fear of crime/perception of risk and for prior victimization. Since prior victimizations are exogenous to the determination of the current...

In her study of occupational segregation in the United States using the 1960 Census, Barbara R. Bergmann found black males with low levels of education more concentrated in low-skill service and laborer occupations than white males and virtually excluded from higher status occupations. Utilizing a crowding index which, similar to Bergmann's, contro...

The aim was to examine whether design features of Wave 1, 1980 National Incidence Study (NIS) data resulted in sample selection bias when certain victims of maltreatment were excluded. Logistic regression models for the probability of child abuse reports to the child protective services (CPS) were estimated using maximum likelihood methods for Blac...

This article measures the racial disparities in home ownership and home equity among preretirement-aged households. It computes the proportion of the racial gap explained by discrimination in housing and credit markets. Maximum likelihood and nonlinear least squares estimates are obtained for models of home ownership probabilities and home equity,...

Race-based remedies often are justified by evidence of prior discrimination. They work when they benefit groups previously disadvantaged. This article examines one such remedy-minority business set-asides-and its application in the award of public procurement and construction contracts by the state of New Jersey. Analyzed are contract awards to min...

Race-based remedies often are justified by evidence of prior discrimination. They work when they benefit groups previously disadvantaged. This article examines one such remedy-minority business set-asides-and its application in the award of public procurement and construction contracts by the state of New Jersey. Analyzed are contract awards to min...

Data from the United States Census confirm a substantial increase in the racial earnings gap between 1980 and 1990. This paper examines data on whites and non-white wage and salary incomes in Houston TX for 1980 and 1990. Data on time travelled to work is used to simulate what would be the impact of shorter commute times on earnings inequality. The...

This article explores the links between self-admitted drug dealing and labor force behavior to determine if and/or how returns to employment influence the decisions by both blacks and whites to enter drug dealing. Using data collected on inmates in prisons and jails in California, Michigan, and Texas, this analysis concludes that black and white of...

Violent crime contributes to depleting the supply of marriageable males in minority communities. Young black males die disproportionately due to homicides. Also, a disproportionate number of young black males are in prisons and jails. Consequently, they are withdrawn from the productive labor force and become less desirable mates and fathers. They...

Long before economics acquired the apt designation as the dismal science, it was known as political economy. Its muses, though, were not known as political economists. Instead, they often responded to titles like "moral philosopher" and "professor of theology and jurisprudence." For example, you might recall that the father of modern economics, Ada...

Deeply rooted historical patterns allow us to make a correlation between imprisonment and unemployment and the marginalization of blacks. This paper examines the interrelationships among criminal activity, punishment, and cycles of the economic system based on the influence of political and economic forces on forming penal policies. The penal syste...

Conventional wisdom about the criminal justice system suggests that extralegal factors such as race or employment status should not affect sentencing outcomes. In this paper we examine an alternative model of the relationship between imprisonment and unemployment and race. The model suggests that penal practices are shaped by the labor market condi...

In economically troubled times, blacks have been incarcerated and executed in disproportionate numbers. Prisons have served to siphon off the most superfluous segment of the labor pool. Black imprisonment has had a devastating effect on the black family, marginalizing males and increasing their chances of further unemployment and criminal activity....

A method, adopted from the labor econometrics literature, is proposed for detecting discrimination in punishment. The method requires the separate estimation of time served and punishment probability equations for, say, whites and blacks. The coefficients from the white equation are used to predict the punishment blacks would receive if treated lik...

This paper examines empirically the "economic motivation" explanation for the dramatic rise in the proportion of black families headed by females, an explanation positing the attractiveness of welfare as an inducement to black women to "choose" to remain unmarried. Using a Granger-Sims statistical causality test, applied to Current Population Surve...