Roland G. Fryer

Understanding the Black-White Test Score Gap in the First Two Years of School

In previous research, a substantial gap in test scores between white and black students persists, even after controlling for a wide range of observable characteristics. Using a newly available data set (the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study), we demonstrate that in stark contrast to earlier studies, the black-white test score gap among incoming kindergartners disappears when we control for a small number of covariates. Real gains by black children in recent cohorts appear to play an important role in explaining the differences between our findings and earlier research. The availability of better covariates also contributes. Over the first two years of school, however, blacks lose substantial ground relative to other races. There is suggestive evidence that differences in school quality may be an important part of the explanation. None of the other hypotheses we test to explain why blacks are losing ground receive any empirical backing.

A Categorical Model of Cognition and Biased Decision Making

There is a wealth of research demonstrating that agents process information with the aid of categories. In this paper we study this phenomenon in two parts. First, we build a model of how experiences are sorted into categories and how categorization affects decision making. Second, in a series of results that partly characterize an optimal categorization, we show that specific biases emerge from categorization. For instance, types of experiences and objects that are less frequent in the population tend to be more coarsely categorized and lumped together. As a result, decision makers make less accurate predictions when confronted with such objects. This can result in discrimination against minority groups even when there is no malevolent taste for discrimination. However, such comparative statics are highly sensitive to the particular situation; optimal categorizations can change in surprising ways. For instance, increasing a groups population, holding all else constant, can lead a decision maker to make less accurate predictions about that group.

Affirmative Action and Its Mythology

For more than three decades, critics and supporters of affirmative action have fought for the moral high ground -- through ballot initiatives and lawsuits, in state legislatures, and in varied courts of public opinion. The goal of this paper is to show the clarifying power of economic reasoning to dispel some myths and misconceptions in the racial affirmative action debates. We enumerate seven commonly held (but mistaken) views one often encounters in the folklore about affirmative action (affirmative action may involve goals and timelines, but definitely not quotas, e.g.). Simple economic arguments reveal these seven views to be more myth than fact.

Discrimination: Experimental Evidence from Psychology and Economics

Discriminations dynamic nature means that no single theory, method, data or study should be relied upon to assess its magnitude, causes, or remedies. Despite some gains in our understanding, these remain active areas of debate among researchers, practitioners and policymakers. The specially commissioned papers in this volume, all by distinguished contributors, present the full range of issues related to this complex and challenging problem.

Is School Segregation Good or Bad

It has been well documented that segregation across schools — denying access to resources, inferior educational production functions, and so on — exacerbates racial differences in achievement. Using an individual measure of social connections within schools, we have shown that this form of segregation — Asian kids sitting together in the cafeteria — has a substantively unimportant relationship with academic achievement or social behavior in school or later in life. There are important caveats to our analysis: (a) our estimates of the relationship between within - school segregation and outcomes are not causal; and (b) friendships may not be the only relevant cross-race social interaction that occurs within a school.

On the Measurement of Segregation

This paper develops a measure 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. Developing three desirable axioms that any segregation measure should satisfy, we prove that one and only one segregation index satisfies our three axioms, and the two aims mentioned above; which we coin the Spectral Segregation Index. We apply the index to two well-studied social phenomena: residential and school segregation. We calculate the extent of residential segregation across major US cities using data from the 2000 US Census. The correlation between the Spectral index and the commonly-used dissimilarity index is .42. Using detailed data on friendship networks, available in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we calculate the prevalence of within-school racial segregation. The results suggests that the percent of minority students within a school, commonly used as a substitute for a measure of in-school segregation, is a poor proxy for social interactions.

An empirical analysis of racial differences in police use of force

This paper explores racial differences in police use of force. On non-lethal uses of force, blacks and Hispanics are more than fifty percent more likely to experience some form of force in interactions with police. Adding controls that account for important context and civilian behavior reduces, but cannot fully explain, these disparities. On the most extreme use of force - officer-involved shootings - we find no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account. We argue that the patterns in the data are consistent with a model in which police officers are utility maximizers, a fraction of which have a preference for discrimination, who incur relatively high expected costs of officer-involved shootings. Language: en

The Impact of Voluntary Youth Service on Future Outcomes: Evidence from Teach For America

Abstract This paper provides causal estimates of the impact of service programs on those who serve, using data from a web-based survey of former Teach For America (TFA) applicants. We estimate the effect of voluntary youth service using a discontinuity in the TFA application process. Participating in TFA increases racial tolerance, makes individuals more optimistic about the life prospects of poor children, and makes them more likely to work in education.

Bobbing for Widgets: Compensating Wage Differentials

The authors describe a classroom game that introduces the concept of compensating wage differentials by allowing students to negotiate over the assignment of jobs and wages. Two jobs are designed so that neither job requires special skills, but one is significantly more unpleasant than the other. By varying the job titles and duties, students can see how wages respond to changes in job characteristics. The impact of various policy measures, such as comparable worth legislation and safety regulation, is also explored. This game can be conducted in a 50-minute class and requires only a deck of cards, poker chips, and a container of ice water.

Self-Selection and Comparative Advantage in Social Interactions

We propose a model of social interactions based on comparative advantage. When comparative advantage is the guiding principle of social interactions, the effect of moving a student into an environment with higher-achieving peers depends on where in the ability distribution she falls and the shadow prices that clear the social market. We show that the model’s key prediction -- an individual’s ordinal rank predicts her behavior and test scores, ceteris paribus -- is borne out in one randomized controlled trial in Kenya as well as two large observational data sets from the U.S. To test whether comparative advantage can explain the effect of rank on outcomes, we conduct an experiment with nearly 600 public school students in Houston. The experimental results suggest that social interactions are, at least in part, governed by comparative advantage.