Raising the share of adults with college degrees in a region or jurisdiction is a nearly universal goal of regional policy makers. They believe that education, as summarized by this statistic, is the cause of increasing employment, productivity, and wages. Using statistics estimated from the decennial censuses and the American Community Survey, this analysis demonstrates how different measures would suggest different rankings of more successful versus less successful metro areas. The place-of-birth variable in Census data enables a disaggregation of the origins of the skilled and unskilled adult populations. This provides insight into whether high-skilled regions developed talent among natives or attracted talent nationally or globally. I find that metros in states that are successful at getting their natives through college have experienced lower growth in their native and migrant graduate populations. With a few exceptions, metro areas with high degree shares or large improvements in their degree share have not grown their graduate population at unusually high rates. The numbers suggest that metro areas held up as exemplars of educational attainment have achieved this distinction to a large extent by being unattractive to non-graduates.

Previous research has highlighted the importance of informal job search through social networks. Nevertheless, the impacts of different types of networks have always been examined in isolation. This paper extends a standard search model to permit multiple networks, thus allowing exploration of the interplay between social networks as well as comparison of their relative effectiveness. In particular, the paper models the job search process of immigrants who may gather job-related information from two networks: the "native network" accessed through inter-ethnic marriage and the "immigrant network" in forms of ethnic enclaves. The impact of either network is shown to be contingent on whether social networks are exclusive. This conjecture provides theoretical foundation to identify the interplay of social networks empirically. Using data from the 2000 U.S. Census and addressing the endogeneity of network usage, I find robust evidence that the usage of social networks is exclusive: being a member of one network limits one's access to information from other sources. Moreover, the relative effectiveness of the native network depends crucially on the quality of the immigrant network.

The state of Georgia allocated most of its land to the public through a system of lotteries. These episodes provide unusual opportunities to assess the long-term impact of shocks to wealth, as winning was uncorrelated with individual characteristics and the eligible population was drawn from a broad cross section of adult white males. Using wealth measured in the 1850 Census manuscripts, we follow up on a sample of men eligible to win in the 1832 Cherokee Land Lottery. We assess the impact of lottery winning on the distribution of wealth almost 20 years after the fact. Winners are on average richer (by an amount close to the median of 1850 wealth), but mainly due to a shifting of mass from the middle to the upper tail of the wealth distribution. The lower tail is largely unaffected. We present some possible mechanisms (fixed costs, interactions with ability, risk, and life-cycle consumption patterns) for this result.

This article highlights and fills gaps in research on migrant elites, traditionally defined as highly educated or professional migrants. The research on elite migrants has often suffered from methodological individualism: elite migrants are depicted as male professionals who shuttle from one work assignment or country to another, unrestricted by family relationships or national borders. My research shows the important role of marriage and family ties in life decisions of elite migrants, who in migration statistics and scholarly discussions appear merely as professionals, highly educated persons, or students. I also contribute to the recent literature that challenges the common assumption that migration is a unidirectional movement from one place to another initiated by a single motive, work or family. My research shows that in reality, for both women and men, multiple motives and multidirectional movements are often involved. Furthermore, my research highlights how elite migrants high social status does not necessarily guarantee privileged treatment by the host society or that elite migrants feel a part of the society in which they live. I use international marriages between Finns and Americans in Finland and the United States as a case study. I base my analysis on the 74 interviews that I conducted with American migrants and their Finnish spouses living in the capital region of Finland, in or near Helsinki, and with Finnish migrants married to US citizens and living in the state of Minnesota. In addition, I use responses to an online survey of American-born people who were living in Finland in 2008. I received 106 responses to the survey.

The negative effects of location in dense areas on the survival of organizations have been almost entirely attributed to the local nature of competition. To examine the salience of this theory, I choose an industrial setting in which organizations located in concentrated areas face higher mortality—the US firearms industry—and set up a test for the theory based on the impact of geographic concentration on an alternative indicator: organizational relocation. Results indicate that organizations are more likely to relocate from dense areas to other dense areas and thus local competition is unlikely to be the main mechanism driving relocation. I present conjectures that provide alternative explanations for the observed effect of geographic concentration on both relocation and exit rates.

En este artículo se analizan algunos determinantes de la participacióneconómica de inmigrantes latinoamericanas, caribeñas, de las nativas blan-cas no-hispanas y afroestadounidenses en Estados Unidos. Se observan lascaracterísticas de dicha participación y se establecen algunos factores aso-ciados a ella. Los hallazgos obtenidos permiten establecer que existen dife-rencias significativas en la participación económica de las mujeres latino-americanas y caribeñas en Estados Unidos. En términos generales, la parti-cipación de las nativas blancas no-hispanas y las afroestadounidenses es su-perior a la de las inmigrantes, y los determinantes de dicha participacióncambian de acuerdo al lugar de origen y al estado conyugal de las mujeres.Variables de capital humano como la escolaridad inciden más en la partici-pación económica de las nativas que en las inmigrantes.

Pioneering investigations of urban black communities have asserted that during the early twentieth century, the diverse activities of black entrepreneurs were not organized into a coherent ethnic economy. However, in the present study, multivariate analyses of Census data cast doubt on this assertion. They show that in large northern cities, measures of black participation in numerous entrepreneurial and professional occupations were positively and significantly associated with one another and were, in some cases, positively associated with measures of black participation in various public service, artistic, entertainment, and mass media occupations. There is evidence, then, for a revisionist view of black enterprise that suggests that important economic and social endeavors coexisted in beneficial relationships within the black communities of cities that were the principal destinations of black migrants from the South in the early twentieth century.

In recent decades the proportion college-educated workers entering professional occupations has declined. While the rising incomes of college graduates signals the growing value of skills and education, it seems that these skills are increasingly put to use outside of the professions. This paper examines the occupations of college graduates since 1950 and the implications of these trends for the position of professional occupations. The results show that while the economic rewards of professions remain high, a falling proportion of college students aspire to enter the professions. Some college graduates have shifted to managerial positions, but a substantial number also aspire to and enter positions outside of professional and managerial work.

The impact of military service on the status attainment of World War II veterans has been studied since the 1950s; however, the research has failed to come to any consensus with regard to their level of attainment. Analyses have focused on cross-sectional or longitudinal data without considering the effects of service over the life course. The authors argue that World War II veterans, regardless of race, have greater attainment, measured in terms of education, income, and occupational prestige, over their lifetimes than nonveterans. They use census data from the 1950 through 2000 Public Use Microdata Sample. The authors find that military service afforded white veterans significant advantages through their early and middle working years; however, their nonveteran peers eventually caught up. They also find that black veterans receive more of a social status advantage relative to black nonveterans, and military service helps to close the socioeconomic gap between blacks and whites.

This study examines Blacks participation in the ministry in the U.S. South during the early twentieth century. Analyses of Census data reveal that the odds of southern Blacks participation in the ministry were exceptionally high. These odds were lowest in the hinterlands of the Deep South, where Blacks socioeconomic disadvantages were greatest, and highest in the South's largest cities, where Blacks had established urban communities. The results suggest that support for Blacks participation in the ministry was intensified by urbanism in the South's major cities.

Many industries experience periods of excess capacity. Explanations include firms deterring rivals, anticipating future demand, or the lumpiness of investment. This paper identifies capacity investment intended to deter rivals separately from investment driven by other factors. To achieve this goal, I estimate a new model of spatial price competition and embed it in a dynamic game of investment. The dynamic game captures a crucial trade-o . In the short run, excess capacity induces lower prices and profi ts, while in the long run, investment may deter rivals or accommodate growing demand. Market outcomes reflect the interplay of various incentives, and I separate the effects by comparing investment under two distinct equilibrium concepts: one which allows firms to deter rivals, and one which does not. I apply my model to the United States Portland cement industry from 1949 to 1969, a period of considerable investment and growth. During this time, capacity utilization dropped from 94% to 71% nationally. I simulate equilibrium investment strategies in a number of market settings that capture actual costs, demand, and lumpiness. I find that deterrence explains almost all of the industry's excess capacity.

In this paper we contrast the spatial patterns of population density and other demographic changes in growing versus shrinking MSAs from 1980 to 2010. We find that, on average, shrinking MSAs show the steepest drop in population density near the Central Business District (CBD). Motivated by this fact, we explore the connection between changes in population density at the core of the MSA and MSA productivity. We find that changes in near-CBD population density are positively associated with per capita income growth at the MSA-level.

While the United States as a whole saw robust increases in economic activity over the postwar period, the economic performance of regions within the country was highly unequal. In this paper we document that the regions that fared relatively worst in terms of wage and employment growth were those that paid workers the largest wage premiums in 1950. We use this evidence to develop a theory of the decline of the Rust Belt, the highly-unionized manufacturing zone around the Great Lakes. Our theory is that limited competition in labor markets and output markets in the Rust Belt was responsible for much of the regions decline. We formalize the theory in a dynamic general equilibrium model in which productivity growth and regional employment shares are determined by the extent of competition. Evidence from prominent Rust Belt industries supports the models prediction that investment and productivity growth rates were relatively low in the Rust Belt.

Data anonymization has become a major technique in privacy preserving data publishing. Many methods have been proposed to anonymize one dataset and a series of datasets of a data holder. However, no method has been proposed for the anonymization scenario of multiple independent data publishing. A data holder publishes a dataset, which contains overlapping population with other datasets published by other independent data holders. No existing methods are able to protect privacy in such multiple independent data publishing. In this paper we propose a new generalization principle (,)-anonymization that effectively overcomes the privacy concerns for multiple independent data publishing. We also develop an effective algorithm to achieve the (,)-anonymization. We experimentally show that the proposed algorithm anonymizes data to satisfy the privacy requirement and preserves high quality data utility.

When do voters choose to fully fund education through taxation? This paper examines theories of public provision, in particular focusing on the role of political power of the poor, rising incomes, and the external benefits of education. In the early 1800s, common schools in New York were funded through a combination of public funds and private tuition charges, much as in other states at the time. Private charges were sizable--about 60 percent of common school revenues in 1830 and 37 percent in 1850. In 1849 and 1850, New York held two direct voter referenda over an act requiring all public schools to be free of tuition charges. This paper tests theories of public provision using county level variation in private tuition charges, the relationship between subsidies and attendance, and direct voter support for free schools. The findings indicate a reversal of the effect of inequality over this period. The econometric results suggest that there may not be a uniform relationship between inequality and public funding, but one that is dependent on both political institutions and the external benefits of education.

This paper studies how immigrant parents value their children's school quality relative to native-born Americans. Parent valuation of education is examined through the differential effects of school quality on the residential location choices of households with and without children. The analysis relies on data from the 2000 Census and focuses on the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area. The results suggest that immigrant parents place a positive weight on school quality when choosing residences, with immigrants in the median income quintile and Asian immigrants valuing schools significantly higher than their native counterparts. The paper further explores the variation across immigrants to get at the potential mechanisms for the differential valuation of school quality. Selective migration among immigrants and higher potential returns to education for the children of immigrants may explain why immigrant parents emphasize school more in residential location choices.

This working paper investigates the social dimensions of gated communities in US western metropolitan areas, and investigates their contribution to segregation patterns at the metropolitan level. On the basis of a socio-economic typology at the block group level, we analyze the socio-economic patterns associated with gated residential streets in 20 metropolitan areas in the western US (in California, and in Las Vegas and Phoenix). We use geographically referenced data at the gated street level to build a database of gated streets and gated block groups. This definition of gated block groups and gated streets is then compared with the results of a multivariate analysis investigating socioeconomic patterns in three aspects: race and ethnicity, economic class and age in 2010 census. The results show a contrasting understanding of their contribution to segregation patterns: whereas larger gated communities are more likely to be ”retirement communities”, the stronger trend relates to the amplitude of the diffusion of both large and small gated communities within the wealthier neighborhoods. But the analysis of smaller gated developments demonstrates the really diverse and wide spectrum of the gated and private realm of residential neighborhoods.