ECON BC3063 (03) Spring 2008

Prof. Marcellus Andrews

Senior Seminar: Race, Law and Economics

Race, Law and Economics explores the interaction of markets, law and social customs in creating, sustaining and (less reliably) dissolving durable patterns of inequality across “racial” lines – particularly the enduring “color” lines in the United States. This course introduces students to advances in economic theory, economic sociology and legal theory that define an analytical approach to racial inequality in democratic capitalist societies, particularly societies struggling to overcome the legacy of state supported (and in many cases state directed) racial hierarchy like the United States. Topics to be considered include but are not limited to: economic theories of discrimination; the interaction of imperfect information, discrimination and persistent economic disparities across color lines; links between income and wealth distribution on the one hand, the race-based customs of kinship and the intergenerational transmission of economic inequality; introduction to American legal history as well as to law and economics as the subject applies to racial inequality; the economic analysis of crime, punishment and racial disparities in criminal justice systems; the economic analysis of the logic and limits of both the Civil Rights rebellion as well affirmative action; an extended introduction to the economics of immigration, including as assessment of the role of race-based discrimination and competition in the distribution of economic well-being within and among immigrant communities over time; an assessment of the role of race in the extent to which immigrant communities are integrated into host country economies.

Law, sociology and history form the context for the application and interrogation of the economic analysis of racial inequality, with an emphasis on the capacity of analytical economics – including mathematical approaches to economic theory – to enhance, and occasionally cloud – our understanding of persistent, intergenerational disparities in well-being across “color lines”. In addition, we consider the role of law, politics and markets in the evolution of “color lines”, including the capacity of competitive capitalism to open avenues for sexual and romantic unions across “racial lines."