Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Study find no change in racial discrimination in hiring for past 25 years!


Sad but True. Hiring Discrimination has not Changed Since 1989

A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that discrimination in hiring has not changed for Blacks since 1989. There was a slight decrease for Latinos during the same time period.

The four researchers looked at every hiring discrimination study since 1972. They chose to focus on the period 1989 to 2015 when better studies became available. They gathered up all the data from each of the individual studies to build a larger, "meta" data set.  The data contained about 56,000 applications for 26,000 positions in total. The studies took into account education, gender, and local labor market conditions.

Based on the studies, Whites receive about 36% more call backs than Blacks and 24% more callbacks than Latinos. The results have not changed in 25 years.

The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Here is a link tothe  PNAS study on hiring discrimination. And the abstract. The paper looks at an assembled data set from multiple hiring discrimination studies.

It's sad to say: We have made NO progress on hiring discrimination in 25 years.

It is also interesting to note that during approximately the same period, 1980 to 2017, wages for the majority of workers have been flat. So, with more workers fighting over fewer good jobs there is no  incentive to reduce hiring discrimination.

EBE Note #2: You have to hand it to the National Academy of Sciences for solid, large scale, impactful research.  They tackled immigration and pretty much settled the debate about the true cost of immigration to US soceity.  Now the produce a great and sad study about hiring discrimination.




Monday, October 23, 2017

Top Black Business and Black Economic Stories for the Month of October, 2017

Top Stories


Forbes report that Mented, a Cosmetics company, raised more than $1 million in venture capital financing.  Mented, which is short for pigmented and was found by two black women who met at Harvard business school.


The Colin Kaepernick foundation has almost reached his pledge to donate $1 million dollars to charity.  The money comes from his 2016 season salary plus football jersey sales.


New data show African American Student loan crisis
This story shows Blacks are more likely to have large student loan debt.  Also for profit colleges targeted African Americans contributing to the student debt crisis. 




Employment Discrimination and Harassment







Personnel Moves





Universal Basic Income

Stockton has a Black mayor

Cities and Urban Affairs



Black Celebrity Business News



Main Steam Economics

President Trump and the Republicans propose tax cut for corporations and the rich

GOP Tax Plan from the Washington Post

The Whitehouse Council of Economic Advisers tax study uses poor economic reasoning

Council of Economic Advisers Study on Tax Cuts and Wages

The Council of Economic Advisers study supports cutting the official corporate tax rate from 35% to 20%. The CEA says that the effort will boost middle class wages. Here are some initial problems with the study

There is a huge assumption that corporations would use the extra money from tax reduction to fund wages and investments rather than pay dividend to the rich. There are lots of reasons to doubt those assumptions

1) Corporations already have a record amount of cash holdings that they are not investing nor using for wages.  Reports say corporations are sitting on nearly $2 Trillion in cash.
2) There is no pressure to raise wages in the current globalized environment.
3) Most corporations don’t pay that actual 35% tax rate. Instead they pay an effective tax rate for about 18% on average.
4) Other countries would respond to our tax rate change, creating a race to the bottom. The only winner would be corporations. Ireland has been ripping of the EU for years with "shell" corporations.
5) And finally, there is no proven link between corporate tax rates and wages. Yikes.

Also, the study says the average tax payer would reap a $4000-$9000 dollar benefit.  So with 315 million people that

The figures are pure speculation.  Any realistic economic model would be too complex to making a prediction with any kind of accuracy.  Instead, a real model would produce an average number (say $6000) and a upper for lower range(like -$10,000 to $20,000). That's a range of $30,000 and some people would be losers under the plan.

The CEA is just producing economic cover for a tax proposal that benefits the rich. 



Richard Thaler wins nobel prize in economics. Dr. Thaler won for work in behaviorial economics.

We are more Homer than Spock. An interesting look at behavior economics.

Interesting / Other


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