Robert W Fairlie
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 325685 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Robert W Fairlie |
| NOMBRES | Robert W |
| APELLIDO | Fairlie |
| FIRMA | FAIRLIE R W |
| AFILIACIONES | University of California, Santa Cruz |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8634-9785 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 43 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 141 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 43 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1996 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 8 |
Job Training, English Language Skills, and Employability
Low-income individuals in developing countries are often inadequately prepared for employment because they lack key labor market skills. We explore how employability and wage outcomes are related to English language skills in a novel, large-scale randomized field experiment conducted in Delhi, India, involving 1,260 low-income individuals. Experimental estimates indicate that a job training program that emphasizes English language skills training…
Isolating the "Tech" from EdTech
EdTech, which includes computer-assisted learning (CAL), online education, and remote instruction, was expanding rapidly even before the COVID-19 pandemic. Studies of CAL interventions often find positive effects; however, these “CAL programs” often include non-technology-based inputs such as more time spent on learning and additional instructional support by facilitators. In this paper, we discuss the possible channels by which CAL programs affe…
Education and EdTech during Covid-19
In response to the COVID-19 epidemic, many education systems have relied on distance learning and educational technologies to an unprecedented degree. However, rigorous empirical research on the impacts on learning under these conditions is still scarce. We present the first large-scale, quantitative evidence detailing how school closures affected education in China. The data set includes households and teachers of 4,360 rural and urban primary s…
Were small businesses more likely to permanently close in the pandemic
Previous estimates indicate that COVID-19 led to a large drop in the number of operating businesses operating early in the pandemic, but surprisingly little is known on whether these shutdowns turned into permanent closures and whether small businesses were disproportionately hit. This paper provides the first analysis of permanent business closures using confidential administrative firm-level panel data covering the universe of businesses filing…
The impacts of Covid‐19 on racial inequality in business earnings
Many small businesses closed in the pandemic, but were economic losses disproportionately felt by businesses owned by people of color? This paper provides the first study of the impacts of COVID‐19 on racial inequality in business earnings. Pandemic‐induced losses to business earnings in 2020 were 16% to 19% for all business owners. Racial inequality increased in the pandemic: Black business owners experienced larger negative impacts on business …
Did the Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program get disbursed to minority communities in the early stages of Covid-19
Social distancing restrictions and health- and economic-driven demand shifts from COVID-19 shut down many small businesses with especially negative impacts on minority owners. Is there evidence that the unprecedented federal government response to help small businesses—the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and the related COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL)—which had a stated goal of helping disadvantaged groups, was disbursed evenly t…
The early impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on business sales
Diminishing Marginal Returns to Computer‐Assisted Learning
The previous expansion of EdTech as a substitute for traditional learning around the world, the recent full‐scale substitution due to COVID‐19, and potential future shifts to blended approaches suggest that it is imperative to understand input substitutability between in‐person and online learning. We explore input substitutability in education by employing a novel randomized controlled trial that varies dosage of computer‐assisted learning (CAL)…
Minority student and teaching assistant interactions in STEM
Graduate student teaching assistants from underrepresented groups may provide salient role models and enhanced instruction to minority students in STEM fields. We explore minority student-TA interactions in an important course in the sciences and STEM - introductory chemistry labs - at a large public university. The uncommon assignment method of students to TA instructors in these chemistry labs overcomes selection problems, and the small and act…
Instructional interventions for improving Covid-19 knowledge, attitudes, behaviors
Getting Connected
Early evidence of the impacts of Covid-19 on minority unemployment
The impact of Covid‐19 on small business owners
Social‐distancing restrictions and health‐ and economic‐driven demand shifts from COVID‐19 are expected to shutter many small businesses and entrepreneurial ventures, but there is very little early evidence on impacts. This paper provides the first analysis of impacts of the pandemic on the number of active small businesses in the United States using nationally representative data from the April 2020 Current Population Survey—the first month full…
Introduction to a Special Issue on Entrepreneurship and Employment
With the growing attention to entrepreneurship as an engine of job creation and economic development, it is important for social scientists who are broadly interested in labor market and employment topics to focus attention on new firms and the policies and practices that surround them. The authors argue that the next generation of scholarship should pay particular attention to labor market institutions, the ecosystem of existing employers, and t…
Have we finally bridged the digital divide? Smart phone and Internet use patterns by race and ethnicity
Two decades ago an influential article documented the alarming disparities that existed in access to computers and the Internet between African-Americans and whites (Hoffman and Novak, 1998). Using the latest U.S. Census Bureau/Bureau of Labor Statistics data on computer and Internet access, I find that the “digital divide” has not been bridged and remains as large as it was two decades ago. African-Americans and Latino-Americans are less likely …
A Community College Instructor Like Me
Administrative data from a large and diverse community college are used to examine if underrepresented minority students benefit from taking courses with underrepresented minority instructors. To identify racial interactions, we estimate models that include both student and classroom fixed effects and focus on students with limited choice in courses. We find that the performance gap in terms of class dropout rates and grade performance between wh…
Financial Capital among Minority-Owned Businesses
This article examines the financing patterns of minority-owned businesses. It first reviews findings from the previous literature on financing constraints and related constraints faced by minority firms. Next it conducts an extensive empirical analysis of the barriers to financing faced by minority-owned firms using data from three sources: the Survey of Business Owners (SBO), the Kauffman Firm Survey (KFS), and the Survey of Small Business Finan…
Affirmative action programs and business ownership among minorities and women
Affirmative action programs are commonly used as a means to level the playing field for minority- and women-owned firms in public procurement markets, and therefore may be a positive factor in business entry and survival. To the extent that affirmative action programs also apply to traditional labor markets, however, they may alter the opportunity cost of starting a business. We utilize the elimination of affirmative action in California and Wash…
Entrepreneurship training, risk aversion and other personality traits
The Effects of Home Computers on Educational Outcomes
There is no clear theoretical prediction regarding whether home computers are an important input in the educational production function. To investigate the hypothesis, we conduct a field experiment involving the random provision of free computers to low‐income community college students for home use. Although estimates for a few measures are imprecise and cannot rule out zero effects, we find some evidence that the treatment group achieved better…
Estimating the capital gap for small businesses in New York city
Previous research suggests that inefficiencies in the small business market exist surrounding the availability of capital by Small and Microenterprises (SMMEs). Using data from the 1992 Characteristics of Business Owners Survey (CBO), the 2002 Survey of Business Owners (SBO), and the 2003 Survey of Small Business Finance (SSBF) this paper empirically estimates the "capital gap"- that is the unmet capital demand for business by SMMEs. We find that…
Last hired, first fired? black-white unemployment and the business cycle
Studies have tested the claim that blacks are the last hired during periods of economic growth and the first fired in recessions by examining the movement of relative unemployment rates over the business cycle. Any conclusion drawn from this type of analysis must be viewed as tentative because cyclical movements in the underlying transitions into and out of unemployment are not examined. Using Current Population Survey data matched across adjacen…
Gender differences in business performance
Using confidential microdata from the U.S. Census Bureau, we investigate the performance of female-owned businesses making comparisons to male-owned businesses. Using regression estimates and a decomposition technique, we explore the role that human capital, especially through prior work experience, and financial capital play in contributing to why female-owned businesses have lower survival rates, profits, employment and sales. We find that fema…
Race and Entrepreneurial Success
A comprehensive analysis of racial disparities and the determinants of entrepreneurial performance—in particular, why Asian-owned businesses on average perform relatively well and why black-owned businesses typically do not. Thirteen million people in the United States—roughly one in ten workers—own a business. And yet rates of business ownership among African Americans are much lower and have been so throughout the twentieth century. In addition…
Determinants of business success
Last hired, first fired? black-white unemployment and the business cycle
Studies have tested the claim that blacks are the last hired during periods of economic growth and the first fired in recessions by examining the movement of relative unemployment rates over the business cycle. Any conclusion drawn from this type of analysis must be viewed as tentative because cyclical movements in the underlying transitions into and out of unemployment are not examined. Using Current Population Survey data matched across adjacen…
Access to Financial Capital among U.S. Businesses
Using data from multiple sources, including the Characteristics of Business Owners Survey, the authors trace out the relationship between wealth and access to financial capital and the African American—owned business. African Americans are found to have levels of wealth that are one-eleventh those of whites. Starting with this disparity, blacks are much less likely to start businesses than are whites, which results in a substantially lower rate o…
The Emergence, Persistence, and Recent Widening of the Racial Unemployment Gap
Census data show that the ratio of black to white unemployment rates, currently in excess of 2:1, was small or nonexistent before 1940, widened dramatically during the 1940s and 1950s, and widened again in the 1980s. The authors decompose changes in the unemployment gap over the years 1880-1990 to identify the separate contributions of changes in observable worker characteristics and shifts in labor demand. Nearly all of the widening of the gap d…
The Long-Term Costs of Job Displacement for Young Adult Workers
Using NLSY data, the authors estimate the long-term costs of job displacement for young adults. Earnings and wage losses were large for the first three years following displacement. Compared to earnings losses found by other studies for more mature workers, however, earnings losses for these young adults were short-lived, with differences between observed and expected earnings narrowing considerably five years after job loss. At that point, the s…
Explaining Ethnic, Racial, and Immigrant Differences in Private School Attendance
Determinants of business success
Do family caps reduce out-of-wedlock births? Evidence from Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, New Jersey and Virginia
Families, Human Capital, and Small Business
Recent research has concluded that the children of business owners are substantially more likely than others to become self-employed themselves. The authors of this study find that more than half of business owners in the confidential, restricted-access 1992 Characteristics of Business Owners Survey had a self-employed family member before starting their business. Of the group with a self-employed family member, fewer than half had worked in that…
The Effects of Home Computers on Educational Outcomes
There is no clear theoretical prediction regarding whether home computers are an important input in the educational production function. To investigate the hypothesis, we conduct a field experiment involving the random provision of free computers to low‐income community college students for home use. Although estimates for a few measures are imprecise and cannot rule out zero effects, we find some evidence that the treatment group achieved better…
Private schools and “Latino flight” from black schoolchildren
Several recent studies provided evidence that white students’ choice between private and public schools is influenced by the racial composition of the local student population. None of these studies, however, examined whether Latinos are also fleeing to private schools in response to black schoolchildren. I explore the “Latino-flight” hypothesis using data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study and a recently released confidential data …
Entrepreneurship training, risk aversion and other personality traits
Diminishing Marginal Returns to Computer‐Assisted Learning
The previous expansion of EdTech as a substitute for traditional learning around the world, the recent full‐scale substitution due to COVID‐19, and potential future shifts to blended approaches suggest that it is imperative to understand input substitutability between in‐person and online learning. We explore input substitutability in education by employing a novel randomized controlled trial that varies dosage of computer‐assisted learning (CAL)…
Isolating the "Tech" from EdTech
EdTech, which includes computer-assisted learning (CAL), online education, and remote instruction, was expanding rapidly even before the COVID-19 pandemic. Studies of CAL interventions often find positive effects; however, these “CAL programs” often include non-technology-based inputs such as more time spent on learning and additional instructional support by facilitators. In this paper, we discuss the possible channels by which CAL programs affe…
The impacts of Covid‐19 on racial inequality in business earnings
Many small businesses closed in the pandemic, but were economic losses disproportionately felt by businesses owned by people of color? This paper provides the first study of the impacts of COVID‐19 on racial inequality in business earnings. Pandemic‐induced losses to business earnings in 2020 were 16% to 19% for all business owners. Racial inequality increased in the pandemic: Black business owners experienced larger negative impacts on business …
Introduction to a Special Issue on Entrepreneurship and Employment
With the growing attention to entrepreneurship as an engine of job creation and economic development, it is important for social scientists who are broadly interested in labor market and employment topics to focus attention on new firms and the policies and practices that surround them. The authors argue that the next generation of scholarship should pay particular attention to labor market institutions, the ecosystem of existing employers, and t…
Private Schools and "Latino Flight" from Black Schoolchildren
Several recent studies provide evidence that the choice between private and public school among white students is influenced by the racial composition of the local student population.None of these studies, however, examines whether Latinos are also fleeing to private schools in response to black schoolchildren.I explore the "Latino flight" hypothesis using data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS) and a recently released confid…
Ethnic and Racial Self-Employment Differences and Possible Explanations
We show that entrepreneurship rates differ substantially across 60 ethnic and racial groups in the United States.These differences exist within broad combinations of groups such as Asians and Hispanics, and are almost as great after regression controls, including age, education, immigrant status, and time in the country.We then provide evidence on a number of theories of entrepreneurship.An ethnic/racial group's self-employment rate is positively…
The effect of incremental benefit levels on births to AFDC recipients
We examine the relationship between fertility and incremental AFDC benefits using the 1990 Panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). Estimating a logit equation for the probability of a higher-order birth among a sample of AFDC recipients, we find a positive coefficient (although statistically insignificant) on the incremental AFDC benefit level. However, we find a positive correlation between incremental benefits and fertil…
The Absence of the African‐American Owned Business
Estimates from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics indicate that African‐American men are one‐third as likely to be self‐employed as white men. The large discrepancy is due to a black transition rate into self‐employment that is approximately one‐half the white rate and a black transition rate out of self‐employment that is twice the white rate. Using a new variation of the Blinder‐Oaxaca decomposition technique, I find that racial differences in …
The Emergence, Persistence, and Recent Widening of the Racial Unemployment Gap
Census data show that the ratio of black to white unemployment rates, currently in excess of 2:1, was small or nonexistent before 1940, widened dramatically during the 1940s and 1950s, and widened again in the 1980s. The authors decompose changes in the unemployment gap over the years 1880-1990 to identify the separate contributions of changes in observable worker characteristics and shifts in labor demand. Nearly all of the widening of the gap d…
Explaining Ethnic, Racial, and Immigrant Differences in Private School Attendance
Is There “White Flight” into Private Schools? Evidence from the National Educational Longitudinal Survey
Using a recently released confidential data set from the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES), we find some evidence of “white flight” from public schools into private schools partly in response to minority schoolchildren. We also examine whether white flight is from all minorities or only from certain minority groups, delineated by race or income. We find that white families are fleeing public schools with large concentrations of po…
Private Schools and "Latino Flight" from Black Schoolchildren
Several recent studies provide evidence that the choice between private and public school among white students is influenced by the racial composition of the local student population.None of these studies, however, examines whether Latinos are also fleeing to private schools in response to black schoolchildren.I explore the "Latino flight" hypothesis using data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS) and a recently released confid…
Private schools and “Latino flight” from black schoolchildren
Several recent studies provided evidence that white students’ choice between private and public schools is influenced by the racial composition of the local student population. None of these studies, however, examined whether Latinos are also fleeing to private schools in response to black schoolchildren. I explore the “Latino-flight” hypothesis using data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study and a recently released confidential data …
The Long-Term Costs of Job Displacement for Young Adult Workers
Using NLSY data, the authors estimate the long-term costs of job displacement for young adults. Earnings and wage losses were large for the first three years following displacement. Compared to earnings losses found by other studies for more mature workers, however, earnings losses for these young adults were short-lived, with differences between observed and expected earnings narrowing considerably five years after job loss. At that point, the s…
Recent Trends in Ethnic and Racial Business Ownership
Do family caps reduce out-of-wedlock births? Evidence from Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, New Jersey and Virginia
An extension of the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition technique to logit and probit models
The Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition technique is widely used to identify and quantify the separate contributions of group differences in measurable characteristics, such as education, experience, marital status, and geographical differences to racial and gender gaps in outcomes. The technique cannot be used directly, however, if the outcome is binary and the coefficients are from a logit or probit model. I describe a relatively simple method of perf…
Entrepreneurship and Earnings among Young Adults from Disadvantaged Families
The determinants of the global digital divide
To identify the determinants of cross-country disparities in personal computer and internet penetration, we examine a panel of 161 countries over the 1999–2001 period. Our candidate variables include economic variables (income per capita , years of schooling, illiteracy, trade openness), demographic variables (youth and aged dependency ratios, urbanization rate), infrastructure indicators (telephone density, electricity consumption), telecommunic…
Mexican Entrepreneurship
This chapter explores several possible explanations of the lower rates of self-employment among Mexican immigrants in the United States. One possibility is that self-employment propensities of Mexican immigrants may be lower because the socioeconomic characteristics of Mexican workers in the United States differ systematically from those of Mexican workers who remain in Mexico. However, the differences in observed characteristics (such as educati…
Why Are Black‐Owned Businesses Less Successful than White‐Owned Businesses? The Role of Families, Inheritances, and Business Human Capital
Using confidential microdata from the Characteristics of Business Owners survey, we examine why African American–owned businesses lag substantially behind white‐owned businesses in sales, profits, employment, and survival. Black business owners are much less likely than white owners to have had a self‐employed family member owner prior to starting their business and less likely to have worked in that family member’s business. Using a nonlinear de…
Access to Financial Capital among U.S. Businesses
Using data from multiple sources, including the Characteristics of Business Owners Survey, the authors trace out the relationship between wealth and access to financial capital and the African American—owned business. African Americans are found to have levels of wealth that are one-eleventh those of whites. Starting with this disparity, blacks are much less likely to start businesses than are whites, which results in a substantially lower rate o…
Families, Human Capital, and Small Business
Recent research has concluded that the children of business owners are substantially more likely than others to become self-employed themselves. The authors of this study find that more than half of business owners in the confidential, restricted-access 1992 Characteristics of Business Owners Survey had a self-employed family member before starting their business. Of the group with a self-employed family member, fewer than half had worked in that…
Race and Entrepreneurial Success
A comprehensive analysis of racial disparities and the determinants of entrepreneurial performance—in particular, why Asian-owned businesses on average perform relatively well and why black-owned businesses typically do not. Thirteen million people in the United States—roughly one in ten workers—own a business. And yet rates of business ownership among African Americans are much lower and have been so throughout the twentieth century. In addition…
Determinants of business success
Gender differences in business performance
Using confidential microdata from the U.S. Census Bureau, we investigate the performance of female-owned businesses making comparisons to male-owned businesses. Using regression estimates and a decomposition technique, we explore the role that human capital, especially through prior work experience, and financial capital play in contributing to why female-owned businesses have lower survival rates, profits, employment and sales. We find that fema…
Last hired, first fired? black-white unemployment and the business cycle
Studies have tested the claim that blacks are the last hired during periods of economic growth and the first fired in recessions by examining the movement of relative unemployment rates over the business cycle. Any conclusion drawn from this type of analysis must be viewed as tentative because cyclical movements in the underlying transitions into and out of unemployment are not examined. Using Current Population Survey data matched across adjacen…
Estimating the capital gap for small businesses in New York city
Previous research suggests that inefficiencies in the small business market exist surrounding the availability of capital by Small and Microenterprises (SMMEs). Using data from the 1992 Characteristics of Business Owners Survey (CBO), the 2002 Survey of Business Owners (SBO), and the 2003 Survey of Small Business Finance (SSBF) this paper empirically estimates the "capital gap"- that is the unmet capital demand for business by SMMEs. We find that…
Financial Capital among Minority-Owned Businesses
This article examines the financing patterns of minority-owned businesses. It first reviews findings from the previous literature on financing constraints and related constraints faced by minority firms. Next it conducts an extensive empirical analysis of the barriers to financing faced by minority-owned firms using data from three sources: the Survey of Business Owners (SBO), the Kauffman Firm Survey (KFS), and the Survey of Small Business Finan…
Affirmative action programs and business ownership among minorities and women
Affirmative action programs are commonly used as a means to level the playing field for minority- and women-owned firms in public procurement markets, and therefore may be a positive factor in business entry and survival. To the extent that affirmative action programs also apply to traditional labor markets, however, they may alter the opportunity cost of starting a business. We utilize the elimination of affirmative action in California and Wash…
Economics (34 obras) · Demographic economics (25 obras) · Sociology (21 obras) · Business (19 obras) · Economic growth (17 obras) · Political science (17 obras) · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy (15 obras) · Population (14 obras) · Psychology (14 obras) · Entrepreneurship Studies and Influences (13 obras)