The Political Economy and Impact of Race-Specific Policy, 1940-1970

这个项目扩大了对20世纪非裔美国人经济进步的调查范围，考察了支持采取各种与种族有关的政策的政治经济学，然后通过衡量这些政策的影响。调查的重点是1940年至1970年期间，市、州和联邦各级政府就与劳动力和住房市场有关的反歧视立法进行了辩论和颁布。到目前为止，经济学文献主要集中在评估联邦立法的影响上。因此，经济学家对特定种族政策的出现的理解在经验上是薄弱的；次联邦立法的影响仍然没有得到充分的探索；非裔美国人的流动性、政治参与和经济地位之间的联系仍然模糊不清。因此，经济学家和政策制定者对于政府政策如何以及在多大程度上促进了非裔美国人的经济地位，并没有一个完整的图景。该项目首先对推动反歧视政策的经济、政治和社会力量进行了实证探索。这是通过利用各州和城市在政策采纳时间上的差异，通过收集对特定州内部政治经济的详细研究，并通过确定跨地区和跨政府层级(市、州和联邦)的潜在互动来实现的。然后，该项目将对政策来源的考虑与对政策对劳动力和住房市场的影响的评估结合在一起。同样，不同地点在政策变化的时间上的差异为衡量政策影响提供了有用的基础。最终，该项目寻求对20世纪政府政策与非裔美国人经济进步之间的联系进行更全面、更连贯的评估。

This project widens the scope of inquiry into twentieth century African-American economic progress by examining the political economy that underpinned the adoption of a variety of race-related policies and then by measuring the impact of those policies. The investigation focuses on the 1940 to 1970 period when anti-discrimination legislation pertaining to labor and housing markets was debated and enacted at municipal, state, and federal levels of government. To this point in time, the economics literature has focused primarily on assessing the impact of the federal legislation. Consequently, economists' understanding of the emergence of race-specific policies is empirically weak; the effects of sub-federal legislation remain under-explored; and the connections between African-American mobility, political participation, and economic status remain dimly lit. Thus, economists and policymakers have an incomplete picture of how and how much government policy has contributed to the economic status of African-Americans. The project begins by exploring empirically the economic, political, and social forces that combined to promote anti-discrimination policies. This is accomplished by exploiting variation across states and cities in the timing of policy adoption, by assembling detailed studies of the internal political economy of particular states, and by identifying potential interactions across localities and across layers of government (municipal, state, and federal). The project then integrates consideration of the policies' origins with evaluations of the policies' impacts on labor and housing markets. Again, variation across locations in the timing of policy change provides a useful basis for the measurement of policy impact. Ultimately, the project seeks to achieve a more complete and more coherent assessment of the connections between government policy and African-American economic progress in the twentieth century.