Person: Fryer, Roland
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Fryer
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Fryer, Roland
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Publication Achieving Escape Velocity: Neighborhood and School Interventions to Reduce Persistent Inequality(American Economic Association, 2013) Fryer, Roland; Katz, LawrenceThis paper reviews the evidence on the efficacy of neighborhood and school interventions in improving the long-run outcomes of children growing up in poor families. We focus on studies exploiting exogenous sources of variation in neighborhoods and schools and which examine at least medium-term outcomes. Higher-quality neighborhoods improve family safety, adult subjective well-being and health, and girls' mental health. But they have no detectable impact on youth human capital, labor market outcomes, or risky behaviors. In contrast, higher-quality schools can improve children's academic achievement and can have longer-term positive impacts of increasing educational attainment and earnings and reducing incarceration and teen pregnancy.Publication Measuring the Compactness of Political Districting Plans(University of Chicago Press, 2011) Fryer, Roland; Holden, RichardWe develop a measure of compactness based on the distance between voters within the same district relative to the minimum distance achievable, which we coin the relative proximity index. Any compactness measure that satisfies three desirable properties (anonymity of voters, efficient clustering, and invariance to scale, population density, and number of districts) ranks districting plans identically to our index. We then calculate the relative proximity index for the 106th Congress, which requires us to solve for each state’s maximal compactness—a problem that is nondeterministic polynomial-time hard (NP hard). The correlations between our index and the commonly used measures of dispersion and perimeter are −.37 and −.29, respectively. We conclude by estimating seat-vote curves under maximally compact districts for several large states. The fraction of additional seats a party obtains when its average vote increases is significantly greater under maximally compact districting plans relative to the existing plans.Publication Exploring the Impact of Financial Incentives on Stereotype Threat: Evidence from a Pilot Study(American Economic Association, 2008) Fryer, Roland; Levitt, Steven D.; List, John A.Publication A Model of Social Interactions and Endogenous Poverty Traps(SAGE Publications, 2007) Fryer, RolandThis paper develops a model of social interactions and endogenous poverty traps. The key idea is captured in a framework in which the likelihood of future social interactions with members of one's group is partly determined by group-specific investments made by individuals. I prove three main results. First, some individuals expected to make group-specific capital investments are worse off because their observed decision is used as a litmus test of group loyalty — creating a trade-off between human capital and cooperation among the group. Second, there exist equilibria which exhibit bipolar human capital investment behavior by individuals of similar ability. Third, as social mobility increases this bipolarization increases. The model's predictions are consistent with the bifurcation of distinctively black names in the mid-1960s, the erosion of black neighborhoods in the 1970s, accusations of 'acting white', and the efficacy of certain programs designed to encourage human capital acquisition.Publication Belief Flipping in a Dynamic Model of Statistical Discrimination(Elsevier, 2007) Fryer, RolandThe literature on statistical discrimination shows that ex-ante identical groups may be differentially treated in discriminatory equilibria. This paper constructs a dynamic model of statistical discrimination and explores what happens to the individuals who nonetheless overcome the initial discrimination. If an employer discriminates against a group of workers in her initial hiring, she may actually favor the successful members of that group when she promotes from within the firm. The worker's welfare implications (i.e. who benefits from an employer's discriminatory hiring practices) are unclear. Even though agents face discrimination initially, some may be better off because of it.Publication Implicit Quotas(University of Chicago Press, 2009) Fryer, RolandEmployment or admission “goals” are often preferred to affirmative action as a way of obtaining diversity. By constructing a simple model of employer‐auditor interaction, I show that when an auditor has imperfect information regarding employers’ proclivities to discriminate and the fraction of qualified minorities in each employer’s applicant pool, goals are synonymous with quotas. Technically speaking, any equilibrium of the auditing game involves a nonempty set of employers who hire so that they do not trigger an audit by rejecting qualified nonminorities, hiring unqualified minorities, or both. Further, under some assumptions, explicit quotas (those mandated by an auditor) are more efficient than implicit quotas (goals settled on in equilibrium by employers wishing to avoid an audit).Publication A Measure of Segregation Based on Social Interactions(Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2007) Echenique, Federico; Fryer, RolandWe develop an index of segregation based on two premises: (1) a measure of segregation should disaggregate to the level of individuals, and (2) an individual is more segregated the more segregated are the agents with whom she interacts. We present an index that satisfies (1) and (2) and that is based on agents' social interactions: the extent to which blacks interact with blacks, whites with whites, etc. We use the index to measure school and residential segregation. Using detailed data on friendship networks, we calculate levels of within-school racial segregation in a sample of U. S. schools. We also calculate residential segregation across major U. S. cities, using block-level data from the 2000 U. S. Census.