Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Although the black-white achievement gap has been narrowing, test scores are not the only source of an educational gap between black and white students. Differences between black and white students exist in opportunities to learn in the form of high school course taking. Following the institutional perspective, I argue that placement of students in advanced math courses is the result of queuing within the school. I use ELS to examine the role of race in high school course taking and find that black students’ likelihood of having taken advanced math courses depends on the racial composition of the school. The higher percent minority within a school, the higher the probability a black student will be in advanced math courses.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper distinguishes between the investigatory utility of facial composites – using composites to apprehend perpetrators – and the diagnostic utility of facial composites – using composites as evidence against suspects. Specifically, it examines whether people’s perceptions of similarity between a composite and suspect are biased by their pre-existing beliefs in the suspect’s guilt. Participants played the role of investigators (Study 1) or jurors (Study 2). Their beliefs in a suspect’s guilt were manipulated, and their perceptions of similarity between the suspect and a composite purportedly of the perpetrator were assessed. Across both studies, beliefs in a suspect’s guilt inflated perceptions of similarity.

Publication Type: Proceeding
Abstract: Much of the comparative politics literature assumes that semi-presidential governments, like parliamentary ones, are made and broken by political parties. We argue that this ignores the fact that governments in semi-presidential regimes have two popularly elected principals: president and assembly. We integrate both actors into a theory of government composition in semi-presidential regimes and examine what shapes their relative power to determine cabinet composition, under which conditions primary control of the cabinet shifts from assembly parties to the president, and how presidential influence alters the party government-relationship. Using data on 207 cabinets in 15 East and West-European countries, our analysis demonstrates that attention to the president is fundamental to a fuller explanation of the nature of cabinets and of the basic mechanisms of delegation in the semi-presidential regimes of West and Eastern Europe.

Supporting Publications:
Supporting Document
Supporting Document
Supporting Document

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: I investigate the relationship between job race-sex composition and the hourly wages of registered nurses (RNs). In addition, I consider how this relationship differs in hospitals that do and do not take affirmative action to increase underrepresented groups—men and racial minorities—in RN positions. Analyses using data from roughly 300 RNs in 80 hospitals in two Pacific Northwest states find as the percent of minority and white female RNs increases, RN wages decrease net of individual, human capital, and job and hospital-level attributes. In hospitals that take affirmative action to increase male and minority RN representation, on the other hand, job race-sex composition is not significantly related to RN hourly wages. I discuss how organizational policies, in particular hospital affirmative action efforts, are one organizational mechanism whereby wages are linked to a job’s social composition.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper provides a preliminary exploration of the relation between neighborhood socio-demographic characteristics and the location of businesses by sector, as well as several measures related to crime, drugs and collective efficacy. Our study is distinguished from prior research by the fact that we use tract-level data for 41 mid-sized cities located in twelve states across the U.S. This lends our results a wider geographic range of applicability than studies focused on a single city or state. The results indicate, first, that neighborhood demographics are highly associated with the commercial activity in an area. In particular, Black neighborhoods are notable for on overall lack of businesses and in each of the measured sectors, even after controlling for level of disadvantage and density. Secondly we find that residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods are more likely to be victims of crime, to perceive crime as a serious problem, and to report the presence of visible drug sales and social disorder. Again, neighborhood racial composition appears to be implicated. Black and Hispanic neighborhoods are more likely to report visible drug sales, but no more likely to be a victim of crime, and less likely to have used illegal drugs, once other neighborhood demographic characteristics are controlled. And while it is impossible to draw conclusions on the basis of these analyses, we suggest that these finding raises the possibility that, above and beyond strictly economic considerations, neighborhood racial composition is one of the factors that businesses take into account when deciding where to situate a business or whether to remain in a community.