Nicolas J. Duquette

How Johnson Fought the War on Poverty: The Economics and Politics of Funding at the Office of Economic Opportunity.

This article presents a quantitative analysis of the geographic distribution of spending through the 1964 Economic Opportunity Act (EOA). Using newly assembled state- and county-level data, the results show that the Johnson administration directed funding in ways consistent with the War on Povertys rhetoric of fighting poverty and racial discrimination: poorer areas and those with a greater share of nonwhite residents received systematically more funding. In contrast to New Deal spending, political variables explain very little of the variation in EOA funding. The smaller role of politics may help explain the strong backlash against the War on Povertys programs.

Revealing the Relationship Between Ship Crowding and Slave Mortality

Historical accounts have linked the overcrowded conditions on the Middle Passage to slaves’ ill health and high mortality. A large literature in economic history has failed to find such effects. This note demonstrates the importance of a statistical explanation: missing data. Studies finding no positive relationship between vessel crowding and Middle Passage mortality are driven by an unrepresentative sample of slave voyages. Using simple methods to correct for missing data on voyage duration, analysis of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database shows a strong and robust association between crowded voyages and slave mortality, consistent with historical accounts. This research was generously supported by graduate fellowships and research funds from the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Economic History Association, and the University of Michigan. The author is grateful for the helpful comments of several thoughtful and generous readers and seminar participants, particularly to David J. Auerbach, Martha J. Bailey, D. James Baker, Benjamin A. Hicklin, George L. Hurrell III, Daniel Marcin, Edie Ostapik, Paul W. Rhode, Elyce J. Rotella, Warren C. Whatley and two anonymous reviewers. A significantly revised version of this paper has been published in the Journal of Economic History, 74(2):535-552, June 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0022050714000291

Spend or Save? Nonprofits’ Use of Donations and Other Revenues:

Panel regression methods are used to estimate the links between nonprofits’ revenues by source and the uses of those revenues. While charities spend most types of revenue on program services, they overwhelmingly save revenue from donations. This is true for all types of charity by National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities code. This saving is not driven by donor restrictions or by short-term strategic shifts but is consistent with expense smoothing over time. Policy makers should consider effects of donation incentives and government grants on the timing of outputs that result from different revenue sources.

Top Donors and the Rising Concentration of Giving in the United States, 1960–2012

This paper computes the share of all household giving accounted for by the American households donating the largest amounts over the 1960–2012 period. The share of donations accounted for by a minority of top donors has risen sharply over this period. This rising concentration is driven by both larger gifts at the top and reduced giving by the broad majority of households. Charities are increasingly dependent on major donors, and the share of donations flowing to the charities receiving the highest levels of donation revenue has risen. The 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act preserved or increased donation incentives for many top donors, and is likely to decrease aggregate charitable giving by less than is widely feared, while accelerating the concentration of giving among those who give the most.

Ship Crowding and Slave Mortality: Missing Observations or Incorrect Measurement?

Inconsistent measurement of ship tonnage, the denominator in the usual measures of crowded conditions on slave vessels, may confound estimated associations between crowding and slave mortality on the Middle Passage. The tonnages reported in Lloyds Registers are shown to be consistent over time and are used to demonstrate that both the unstandardized and standardized tonnages in the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database are deeply flawed. Using corrected tonnages, we find that crowding increased mortality only on British slave ships and only before the passage of Dolbens Act in 1788.