Empowerment and Exploitation:Essays in Economic History.

War on Poverty;1960s Riots;Community Action;Unions;Slave Trade;Ethnic Fractionalization;Economics;Business and Economics;Economics

Gillezeau, Robert L.Rhode, Paul W. ;

University of Michigan

关键词: War on Poverty;    1960s Riots;    Community Action;    Unions;    Slave Trade;    Ethnic Fractionalization;    Economics;    Business and Economics;    Economics;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/111410/gillezr_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

The chapters of this dissertation all fall at the intersection of economic history and public policy. While the topics are historical, they all provide results that are important for policy makers. The second chapter, entitled ;;Did the War on Poverty Stop the 1960s Race Riots?,” uses recently digitized records of War on Poverty spending to determine whether anti-poverty spending was successful in discouraging the 1960s race riots. Using an instrumental variables strategy, funding for the Community Action Program (CAP) is found to have decreased the number of riots by 15-60% and the intensity of rioting by 45-54%. Within the CAP, there is suggestive evidence that politically motivated empowerment programs proved more effective at halting the rioting than economic programs.The third chapter, entitled ;;War Contracts and Break Points: The Economic Geography of American Trade Unions,” examines the spatial evolution of the trade union movement in the United States in order to determine whether changes in union membership are random, driven by locational fundamentals, or governed by increasing returns. In order to causally determine the relationship, the compact between the government and labour during World War II is employed as an exogenous, region-specific shock to union membership. The results indicate that increasing returns to unionization have played an important role. This result is driven by unions choosing to invest their organizing resources in high-density states and firms limiting their retaliation in these same states. These findings suggest that a temporary government intervention in labor relations can have a long-lasting impact.The fourth chapter, entitled ;;The Impact of the Transatlantic Slave Trade on Ethnic Stratification in Africa,” argues that the transatlantic slave trade increased the degree of ethnic heterogeneity in contemporary Africa. Using a causal instrumental variables analysis, we find an economically significant positive relationship between historical slave exports and contemporary ethnic heterogeneity. The strong positive relationship between ethnic fractionalization and slave exports found in this paper suggests that increased ethnic fractionalization may have been a prominent factor in African underdevelopment. The results also suggest that controlling for ethnic fractionalization will result in underestimates of the impact of slavery on development.