Steven N Durlauf
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 299375 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Steven N Durlauf |
| NOMBRES | Steven N |
| APELLIDO | Durlauf |
| FIRMA | DURLAUF S N |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Wisconsin–Madison |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8699-7056 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 49 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 294 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 45 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 6 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1995 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 9 |
The Effects of Parental Income and Family Structure on Intergenerational Mobility
We examine how parental income and family structure during childhood and adolescence affect adult income, emphasizing the timing of these effects. Using an ordered multinomial probability model with functional covariates, we find that these familial influences are strongest in middle childhood and adolescence. We also uncover a complementary relationship in the effects of income and family structure trajectories during key developmental periods. …
Meritocracy and its discontents
This paper explores the justifications for meritocracy, using the assignment of students to classrooms and workers to firms as contexts. I argue that there is fundamental distinction between retrospective meritocracy, in which assignments are rewards for past achievements such as test scores, and prospective meritocracy, in which merit is functionally defined by assignments that best achieve social objectives. I show that these different perspect…
Retrospective Versus Prospective Meritocracy
This article proposes a way of understanding meritocracy from retrospective versus prospective points of view. Retrospective meritocracy is static or backward-looking: Merit is based on an individual’s characteristics or past achievements as representative of excellence or as desert for a position already obtained. Prospective meritocracy is forward-looking: Merit is functionally defined as the comparative contribution that an individual makes to…
Methodological Frontiers in Intergenerational Mobility Research
This special issue of Sociological Methods & Research presents a collection of papers that develop a range of new statistical approaches and empirical insights on intergenerational mobility. The papers in the special issue involve four broad themes: the development of new statistics to characterize mobility, the exploration of methods to establish causal explanations, the enrichment of statistical models to better characterize heterogeneity in mo…
Immobility as Memory
This article proposes some new measures of intergenerational persistence based on the idea of characterizing the memory of origin in the stochastic process that links the socioeconomic classes of parents and children. We introduce 'memory curves' for all future generations given any initial condition of class for a family dynasty, which reveal how initial conditions interact with the transition process between parents and children to create mobil…
Accounting for Individual-Specific Heterogeneity in Intergenerational Income Mobility
This article proposes a fully nonparametric model to investigate the dynamics of intergenerational income mobility for discrete outcomes. In our model, an individual's income class probabilities depend on parental income in a manner that accommodates nonlinearities and interactions among various individual and parental characteristics, including race, education, and parental age at childbearing, and so generalizes Markov chain mobility models. We…
The Journey of Humanity by Oded Galor
The laws of history have nothing in common with a pedantic schematism. (28) Unified growth theory captures the journey of humanity over the entire course of history since the emergence of Homo Sapiens in Africa 500,000 years ago. It identifies and traces the forces that governed the process of development during the Malthusian epoch, eventually triggering the phase transition in which the human species escaped from this poverty trap into an era o…
An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force
Economy As an Evolving Complex System II
Statistical Mechanics Approaches to Socioeconomic Behavior
This chapter provides a unified framework for interpreting a wide range of interactions models which have appeared in the economics literature. It also provides a unified discussion of the use of statistical mechanics methods in the study of socioeconomic behavior. The framework bears a close relationship to econometric models of discrete choice and, therefore, holds the potential for rendering interactions models estimable. A number of new appli…
Meritocracy and Economic Inequality
Status Traps
In this article, we explore nonlinearities in the intergenerational mobility process using threshold regression models. We uncover evidence of threshold effects in children's outcomes based on parental education and cognitive and noncognitive skills as well as their interaction with offspring characteristics. We interpret these thresholds as organizing dynastic earning processes into “status traps.” Status traps, unlike poverty traps, are not abs…
The New Palgrave Dictionary Of Economics
Economic Growth
Capital in the Twenty-First Century
Linear Social Interactions Models
This paper provides a systematic analysis of identification in linear social interactions models. This is a theoretical and econometric exercise as the analysis is linked to a rigorously delineated model of interdependent decisions. We develop an incomplete information game for individual choice under social influences that nests standard models as special cases. We consider identification of both endogenous and contextual social effects under al…
Handbook of Economic Growth
Introduction to the special issue on complexity
Complexity, economics, and public policy
This article considers the implications of complex systems models for the study of economics and the evaluation of public policies. I argue that complexity can enhance current approaches to formal economic analysis, but does so in ways that complement current approaches. I further argue that while complexity can influence how public policy analysis is conducted, it does not delimit the use of consequentialist approaches to policy comparison to th…
Poverty Traps
Much popular belief--and public policy--rests on the idea that those born into poverty have it in their power to escape. But the persistence of poverty and ever-growing economic inequality around the world have led many economists to seriously question the model of individual economic self-determination when it comes to the poor. In Poverty Traps , Samuel Bowles, Steven Durlauf, Karla Hoff, and the book's other contributors argue that there are m…
Overview of “Imprisonment and crime
Imprisonment and crime
Economic Growth
Specially selected from The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics 2nd edition, each article within this compendium covers the fundamental themes within the discipline and is written by a leading practi
Robbins on Economic Generalizations and Reality in the Light of Modern Econometrics
This paper examines Lionel Robbins' critical attitude towards formal empirical work from the standpoint of modern econometrics. It argues that his attitude towards empirical work rested on indefensible assumptions and that he failed to realise that the role he saw for empirical work undermined his belief in the primacy of economic theory. This matters because Robbins' attitudes are echoed in modern economics, best exemplified by the calibration m…
Reconstructing Macroeconomics
On the Empirics of Social Capital
This paper critically examines the way in which empirical evidence is developed in support of a role for social capital in socioeconomic outcomes. Three leading studies of social capital are reviewed and in each case argued to suffer from various identification problems. A general set of conditions under which social capital effects may be identified in linear models is given. Careful attention to these conditions combined with greater openminded…
Imprisonment and crime
A Framework For The Study of Individual Behavior and Social Interactions
Recent work in economics has begun to integrate sociological ideas into the modeling of individual behavior. In particular, this new approach emphasizes how social context and social interdependences influence the ways in which individuals make choices. This paper provides an overview of an approach to integrating theoretical and empirical analysis of such environments. The analysis is based on a framework due to Brock and Durlauf (2001, forthcom…
An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force
Assessing Racial Profiling
In this article I consider the evaluation of racial profiling in traffic stops from a combination of welfarist and non-welfarist considerations. I argue that benefits from profiling in terms of crime reduction have not been identified and that further, the harm to those who are innocent and stopped is potentially high. I then argue that profiling creates a clear injustice to innocent African Americans. Together, these claims make the assessment o…
Linear Social Interactions Models
This paper provides a systematic analysis of identification in linear social interactions models. This is a theoretical and econometric exercise as the analysis is linked to a rigorously delineated model of interdependent decisions. We develop an incomplete information game for individual choice under social influences that nests standard models as special cases. We consider identification of both endogenous and contextual social effects under al…
Complexity and Empirical Economics
This article explores the state of interplay between recent efforts to introduce complex systems methods into economics and the understanding of empirical phenomena. The empirical side of economic complexity may be divided into three general branches: historical studies, the identification of power and scaling laws, and analyses of social interactions. I argue that, while providing useful 'stylised facts', none of these empirical approaches has p…
Overview of “Imprisonment and crime
Are Any Growth Theories Robust
The recent growth literature has seen an explosion of work exploring the role of new and fundamental theories of growth such as geography, institutions, ethnic fractionalization, and religion. Nevertheless, claims about the empirical validity of these new growth theories are typically made within very particular specifications of the growth model. In this paper, we investigate the robustness of these theories when the researcher appropriately acc…
Symposium on Social Capital
This symposium contains three papers that discuss aspects of social capital. Social capital has become a major focus of research in many social sciences. Its increased prominence in economics reflects a general increase in interest in questions that have traditionally been deemed sociological. Regardless of one's opinion of social capital per se, this broadening of questions addressed within economics has been very salutary
Complexity, economics, and public policy
This article considers the implications of complex systems models for the study of economics and the evaluation of public policies. I argue that complexity can enhance current approaches to formal economic analysis, but does so in ways that complement current approaches. I further argue that while complexity can influence how public policy analysis is conducted, it does not delimit the use of consequentialist approaches to policy comparison to th…
Capital in the Twenty-First Century
The Rise and Fall of Cross-Country Growth Regressions
This paper discusses the history of the use of cross-country regressions in modern growth economics. These regressions continue to be the workhorse of empirical growth analysis even though their meaning continues to be controversial. I argue that the early interpretations of these regressions have proven to be inappropriate and led to substantial exaggeration of the evidentiary support for various new growth theories. On the other hand, I argue t…
On The Convergence and Divergence of Growth Rates
Journal Article On The Convergence and Divergence of Growth Rates Get access Steven N. Durlauf Steven N. Durlauf Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Economic Journal, Volume 106, Issue 437, 1 July 1996, Pages 1016–1018, https://doi.org/10.2307/2235374 Published: 01 July 1996
Affirmative action, meritocracy, and efficiency
This article provides a framework for comparing meritocratic and affirmative action admissions policies. The context of the analysis is admissions to public universities; admission rules are evaluated as part of the public investment problem faced by a state government. Meritocratic and affirmative admissions policies are compared in terms of their effects on the level and distribution of human capital. I argue that (a) meritocratic admissions ar…
Associational Redistribution
One of the most important conclusions of recent theoretical work on the economics of inequality is the recognition that equity and efficiency represent complementary policy goals in many contexts. In this essay, I examine possible complementarities between equality and efficiency from the perspective of the redistribution of memberships in various socioeconomic associations. (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item
What should policymakers know about economic complexity
This essay is written with two goals. the first is to outline the main ideas underlying the growing study of complex economic environment. The second is to suggest areas of public policy where those ideas might be important
Meritocracy and its discontents
This paper explores the justifications for meritocracy, using the assignment of students to classrooms and workers to firms as contexts. I argue that there is fundamental distinction between retrospective meritocracy, in which assignments are rewards for past achievements such as test scores, and prospective meritocracy, in which merit is functionally defined by assignments that best achieve social objectives. I show that these different perspect…
Accounting for Individual-Specific Heterogeneity in Intergenerational Income Mobility
This article proposes a fully nonparametric model to investigate the dynamics of intergenerational income mobility for discrete outcomes. In our model, an individual's income class probabilities depend on parental income in a manner that accommodates nonlinearities and interactions among various individual and parental characteristics, including race, education, and parental age at childbearing, and so generalizes Markov chain mobility models. We…
Robbins on Economic Generalizations and Reality in the Light of Modern Econometrics
This paper examines Lionel Robbins' critical attitude towards formal empirical work from the standpoint of modern econometrics. It argues that his attitude towards empirical work rested on indefensible assumptions and that he failed to realise that the role he saw for empirical work undermined his belief in the primacy of economic theory. This matters because Robbins' attitudes are echoed in modern economics, best exemplified by the calibration m…
Convergence in international output
This paper proposes and tests new definitions of convergence and common trends for per capita output. We define convergence for a group of countries to mean that each country has identical long‐run trends, either stochastic or deterministic, while common trends allow for proportionality of the stochastic elements. These definitions lead naturally to the use of cointegration techniques in testing. Using century‐long time series for 15 OECD economi…
Multiple regimes and cross‐country growth behaviour
This paper provides some new evidence on the behaviour of cross‐country growth rates. We reject the linear model commonly used to study cross‐country growth behaviour in favour of a multiple regime alternative in which different economies obey different linear models when grouped according to initial conditions. Further, the marginal product of capital is shown to vary with the level of economic development. These results are consistent with grow…
A theory of persistent income inequality
This paper explores the dynamics of income inequality by studying the evolution of human capital investment and neighborhood choice for a population of families. Parents affect the conditional probability distribution of their children's income through the choice of a neighborhood in which to live. Neighborhood location affects children both through local public finance of education as well as through sociological effects. These forces combine to…
Interpreting tests of the convergence hypothesis
On The Convergence and Divergence of Growth Rates
Journal Article On The Convergence and Divergence of Growth Rates Get access Steven N. Durlauf Steven N. Durlauf Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Economic Journal, Volume 106, Issue 437, 1 July 1996, Pages 1016–1018, https://doi.org/10.2307/2235374 Published: 01 July 1996
Associational Redistribution
One of the most important conclusions of recent theoretical work on the economics of inequality is the recognition that equity and efficiency represent complementary policy goals in many contexts. In this essay, I examine possible complementarities between equality and efficiency from the perspective of the redistribution of memberships in various socioeconomic associations. (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item
What should policymakers know about economic complexity
This essay is written with two goals. the first is to outline the main ideas underlying the growing study of complex economic environment. The second is to suggest areas of public policy where those ideas might be important
Chapter 4 The new empirics of economic growth
Meritocracy and Economic Inequality
Social Dynamics
Economists have traditionally studied aggregate behavior as the outcome of individual decisions made interactively, while sociologists have focused on the role of social influences on individual behavior. Over the past decade, however, the barriers between the disciplines have broken down, resulting in the new area of social economics. Social economics is based on the assumption that individuals are directly influenced by the choices and characte…
Discrete Choice with Social Interactions
This paper provides an analysis of aggregate behavioural outcomes when individual utility exhibits social interaction effects. We study generalized logistic models of individual choice which incorporate terms reflecting the desire of individuals to conform to the behaviour of others in an environment of noncooperative decisionmaking. Laws of large numbers are generated in such environments. Multiplicity of equilibria in these models, which are eq…
Understanding Poverty
In spite of an unprecedented period of growth and prosperity, the poverty rate in the U.S. remains high relative to the levels of the early 1970s and relative to those in many industrialized countries today. This book brings the problem of poverty in America to the fore, focusing on its nature and extent at the dawn of the 21st century
Meritocracy and Economic Inequality
Most Americans strongly favor equality of opportunity if not outcome, but many are weary of poverty's seeming immunity to public policy. This helps to explain the recent attention paid to cultural and genetic explanations of persistent poverty, including claims that economic inequality is a function of intellectual ability, as well as more subtle depictions of the United States as a meritocracy where barriers to achievement are personal--either v…
A Framework For The Study of Individual Behavior and Social Interactions
Recent work in economics has begun to integrate sociological ideas into the modeling of individual behavior. In particular, this new approach emphasizes how social context and social interdependences influence the ways in which individuals make choices. This paper provides an overview of an approach to integrating theoretical and empirical analysis of such environments. The analysis is based on a framework due to Brock and Durlauf (2001, forthcom…
Symposium on Social Capital
This symposium contains three papers that discuss aspects of social capital. Social capital has become a major focus of research in many social sciences. Its increased prominence in economics reflects a general increase in interest in questions that have traditionally been deemed sociological. Regardless of one's opinion of social capital per se, this broadening of questions addressed within economics has been very salutary
On the Empirics of Social Capital
This paper critically examines the way in which empirical evidence is developed in support of a role for social capital in socioeconomic outcomes. Three leading studies of social capital are reviewed and in each case argued to suffer from various identification problems. A general set of conditions under which social capital effects may be identified in linear models is given. Careful attention to these conditions combined with greater openminded…
Chapter 50 Neighborhood effects
Handbook of economic growth
"The Handbook of Economic Growth provides a broad review of the research topics, empirical findings, and methods that comprise modern growth economics. The chapters, written by research leaders, summarize and evaluate recent advances while explaining where further research might be profitable. With analyses that are provocative and controversial because they are so directly relevant to public policy and private decision-making, volume 2A and 2B u…
Chapter 8 Growth Econometrics
Social Capital
Complexity and Empirical Economics
This article explores the state of interplay between recent efforts to introduce complex systems methods into economics and the understanding of empirical phenomena. The empirical side of economic complexity may be divided into three general branches: historical studies, the identification of power and scaling laws, and analyses of social interactions. I argue that, while providing useful 'stylised facts', none of these empirical approaches has p…
Assessing Racial Profiling
In this article I consider the evaluation of racial profiling in traffic stops from a combination of welfarist and non-welfarist considerations. I argue that benefits from profiling in terms of crime reduction have not been identified and that further, the harm to those who are innocent and stopped is potentially high. I then argue that profiling creates a clear injustice to innocent African Americans. Together, these claims make the assessment o…
Are Any Growth Theories Robust
The recent growth literature has seen an explosion of work exploring the role of new and fundamental theories of growth such as geography, institutions, ethnic fractionalization, and religion. Nevertheless, claims about the empirical validity of these new growth theories are typically made within very particular specifications of the growth model. In this paper, we investigate the robustness of these theories when the researcher appropriately acc…
Affirmative action, meritocracy, and efficiency
This article provides a framework for comparing meritocratic and affirmative action admissions policies. The context of the analysis is admissions to public universities; admission rules are evaluated as part of the public investment problem faced by a state government. Meritocratic and affirmative admissions policies are compared in terms of their effects on the level and distribution of human capital. I argue that (a) meritocratic admissions ar…
Robbins on Economic Generalizations and Reality in the Light of Modern Econometrics
This paper examines Lionel Robbins' critical attitude towards formal empirical work from the standpoint of modern econometrics. It argues that his attitude towards empirical work rested on indefensible assumptions and that he failed to realise that the role he saw for empirical work undermined his belief in the primacy of economic theory. This matters because Robbins' attitudes are echoed in modern economics, best exemplified by the calibration m…
Economics (35 obras) · Sociology (20 obras) · Computer Science (14 obras) · Econometrics (14 obras) · Political science (14 obras) · Economic theories and models (13 obras) · Positive economics (12 obras) · Law (11 obras) · Economic Growth and Productivity (10 obras) · Income, Poverty, and Inequality (10 obras)