Stratification Economics Research Articles

Racial Identity Production Dynamics and Persisting Wealth Differentials: Integrating Neo-Institutionalist Perspectives into Stratification Economics

This study advances the analysis of factors contributing to the persistence of the black-white racial wealth gap using insights from Institutional Economics and Stratification Economics. The analysis challenges discourses trumpeting the emergence of a post-racial society in which previous barriers to attaining equal economic outcomes have been eliminated. It is argued that the post-racial rhetoric conveys inaccurate information to agents regarding the expected returns from investments in both capital assets and racial identity. Sub-optimal decisions by Black agents result, in part, from failure to take advantage of cultural knowledge about more advantageous investment strategies tied to indigenous cultural traditions.

Stratification Economics: Context Versus Culture and the Reparations Controversy

The general intent of any program of reparations for a grievous injustice should be threefold: acknowledgment, redress (restitution or atonement), and closure. Acknowledgment involves recognition and admission of the wrong by the perpetrators and/or beneficiaries of the wrong. In the case of blacks, this would mean the receipt of a formal apology and a commitment for redress on the part of the American community as a whole. Restitution means restoration of the victims to their condition prior to the injustice or to a condition they might have attained had the injustice not taken place. Again, in the case of blacks, this would mean the adoption of a national program that would eliminate racial disparities in wealth, income, education, health, political participation, and future opportunity to engage in American social life. Atonement, an alternative form of redress, involves perpetrators and/or beneficiaries meeting whatever conditions of forgiveness are acceptable to the victims. Substantively these conditions will be the product of good faith negotiations between those wronged and the wrongdoers. These conditions could be identical with the requirements for restitution or could meet a weaker standard of compensation.

Be All that you Can Be?: Racial Identity Production in the U.S. Military

This analysis applies concepts from Stratification Economics to undertake an empirical investigation of racial identity production in the U.S. military. The theoretical model treats racial identity as a Becker-type commodity produced by combining market goods and services, and time, using a technology based on pre-existing cultural knowledge. The model is estimated using data from the 1996 Armed Forces Equal Opportunity Survey. The findings suggest that pre-military constructions of racial identity and patterns of racial interaction significantly constrain efforts to inculcate an identification with military culture that sublimates the sources of racial conflict. To the extent that racial tensions deteriorate in the civilian sector it is likely that the challenges facing the military in fostering unit cohesion will intensify. Existing interventions designed to promote military identity and diffuse sources of racial tension appear to have limited efficacy.

Africana Studies and Economics

The scope and meaning of terms like African American Studies, Black Studies, and Africana Studies have evolved continually since the field was established in schools, colleges, and universities in the late 1960s. Discourse about the economic conditions of people of African descent has always constituted an important dimension of the Black intellectual tradition that Africana Studies seeks to preserve and extend. Significant barriers exist, however, to collaboration between economists and Africana Studies specialists. Opportunities to collaborate across the disciplines arise in addressing issues such as hyper-unemployment, pervasive poverty, environmental racism, Black land loss, and the plight of Black farmers. The author suggests that efforts by Africana Studies specialists to understand many of the current dynamics could be enhanced through collaboration with those economists attempting to develop the subfield of stratification economics.

Stratification economics: The role of intergroup inequality

Stratification economics: The role of intergroup inequality

The Economics of Discrimination

The Economics of Discrimination