Full Citation
Title: Essays in North American Economic History
Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis
Publication Year: 2019
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Abstract: This dissertation examines two subjects. After an introduction, the next two chapters examine banks owned and operated by African-Americans before World War II. The final chapter looks at Newfoundland’s political economy from 1867 to 1949. Chapter 2, “Banking on African-American Business,” uses a newly-created data set of banks owned and managed by African Americans from 1907 to 1930. I provide the first analysis of the contribution of African-American banks to the development of African-American communities. Economic progress is measured by business ownership, proxied by the number of African-Americans who reported employing at least one person, as well as white-collar occupations, mortgages, and home ownership. Fixed effects analysis shows that an additional African-American bank per ten thousand AfricanAmerican adults in a county increased the share of African-Americans employing at least one person by 1.9 percentage points, 1.5 times the median rate. Put another way, African-American banks from 1907 to 1930 created roughly 14,000 African-American business owners. This effect persists when limiting the sample to both the South and the Cotton South. The effects on white-collar occupations and home ownership are positive but relatively small, and seen in both the North and the South. Overall, African-American banks made significant contributions to their communities, contrary...
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Authors: Clarke, Geoffrey
Institution: Rutgers University
Department: Economics
Advisor: Carolyn Moehling
Degree: Ph.D.
Publisher Location:
Pages: 205
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Other, Race and Ethnicity
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