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Racial differences in effort at work, if they exist, can potentially explain race-based wage/earnings disparities in the labor market. The authors estimate specifications of time spent on non-work activities at work by Black and White males and females with data from the American Time Use Survey. Estimates reveal that trivially small differences occur between non-Hispanic Black and non-Hispanic White males in time spent not working while on the job that disappear entirely when correcting for non-response errors. The findings imply that Black–White male differences in the fraction of the workday spent not working are either not large enough to partially explain the Black–White wage gap, or simply do not exist at all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Established in 1930, the Nation of Islam (NOI) offered uplift to the wellbeing of Black Americans. Its charismatic leader, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, articulated how membership in the NOI would improve the well-being of Black Americans. We consider the impact of NOI membership on several measures of individual well-being. Using data from the first wave of the National Survey of Black Americans, we appeal to the Rubin Causal Framework to estimate the treatment effect of being a member of the NOI on certain outcomes: e.g., overall socioeconomic status, self-employment, self-esteem, and health status. To enable causal interpretation, we estimate the treatment parameters by matching on observable covariates that are not affected by the treatment. Treatment parameter estimates suggest that, at least in the late 1970s, had the NOI been able to expand its membership, new adherents would have benefited from enhanced Black identity, a higher likelihood of not having common health problems, and a lower likelihood of hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and incarceration. Our findings suggest that the NOI could have had a substantial impact on the individual well-being of Black Americans if it were larger, and that NOI-like organizations can help mitigate race-based inequalities in well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effects of trust in government on the self-employment decision. For black Americans the decision to be self-employed, and the associated returns are likely to be particularly sensitive to trust in the federal government, as the history and political economy of race in the United States required federal government to introduce laws, legislation and institutions to alter the future behavior of whites in their market interactions with blacks. Utilizing General Social Survey Data, I find that among the self-employed, race being black--is a negative determinant of various measures of trust and confidence in federal government. Parameter estimates from a Bivariate Probit estimator of the likelihood of black self-employment and income reveal that both increase with respect to several measures of trust and confidence in the federal government. The results suggest that as the relative growth and performance of black self-employment is trust and confidence sensitive, the underrepresentation of black-owned firms can possibly be explained by the relatively low trust and confidence in the federal government among black Americans. Key Words: Social Capital, Trust, Discrimination, Self-Employment, Black Entrepreneurs JEL Codes: H5, L2, Z13, I. Introduction As a form of social capital, trust can be defined as the willingness to permit the future decisions of others to influence your welfare (Sobel 2002). (1) The [...]