The thesis focuses on the role of race and poverty programs in influencing the housing market in the 1930s. I investigate claims that African American in-migration resulted in the decline of neighborhood property values in New York during the Great Depression. I find that contrary to the expectations of economists and government officials, African American migration initially increased housing values. However, this premium disappeared as the neighborhood was increasingly settled by African Americans.During the 1930s the federal and state governments introduced several programs designed to help people stay in their homes. In my analysis using U.S. Census data from 1920, 1930, and 1940, the results suggest that among the New Deal programs for non-farm households, the Federal Housing Administration was the only program that had a positive and statistically significant influence on the probability of home ownership for both white and black households. The Home Owners' Loan Corporation appears to have had no influence on home ownership rates. Among the farm programs, Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) grants are negatively associated with white farm home ownership rates, but had no statistically significant effect for black farmers which are consistent with previous findings that found the AAA spurred black out-migration from the rural south. Mortgage moratorium laws were associated with an increase in white farmers home ownership rates.Federal public housing for the poor was introduced during the New Deal. I examine how housing officials selected the location of public housing and measures the effect of public housing on surrounding contract rents in New York City between 1934 and 1940. I find that public housing was constructed in poor, crowded neighborhoods with nearby public transportation. My findings also suggest that public housing increased the share of contract rents throughout the city. The magnitude of the effect also appeared to not dissipate as the distance to public housing increased. However, my results suggest that the early public housing projects constructed by the Public Works Administration led to greater spillovers in in contract rents than the later projects constructed by the United States Housing Authority.

The first chapter of this thesis studies the effect of labor unions on the elasticity of substitution between production inputs in several transportation industries such as railroad, postal service and air transportation. The elasticity is derived from two different methods: the CES production function and the translog cost function. This study finds that labor unions lower the flexibility to substitute between labor and capital in the air transportation industry. The second chapter estimates the effect of using internet job search on labor market outcomes. This study uses a Cox Proportional Hazard Model to find the effect of internet job search on unemployment duration. Further, a generalized Oaxaca wage decomposition is employed to explore a difference in wages received between internet job searchers and non-internet job searchers. The results show that internet job search is associated with higher education. However, there is no evidence that internet job search shortens unemployment duration of the job searchers. Finally, internet job searchers obtain slightly lower wages than non-internet job searchers. The last chapter in this dissertation studies the effect of New Economy Policy (NEP) on ethnics' economics gap in Malaysia. Specifically, this chapter estimates a degree of occupational segregation before and after NEP between ethnic Malays and Chinese, between ethnic Malaya and Indians, and between ethnic Chinese and Indians by using the Duncan Dissimilarity Index. In addition, this study also estimates a generalized Oaxaca wage decomposition between these ethnic groups before and after NEP. This study finds that NEP managed to reduce occupational segregation between all ethnic groups. However, all ethnic wage gaps continued to rise after 1986.

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<p>Urban problems have several features that make them inherently dynamic. Large transaction costs all but guarantee that homeowners will do their best to consider how a neighborhood might change before buying a house. Similarly, stores face large sunk costs when opening, and want to be sure that their investment will pay off in the long run. In line with those concerns, different areas of Economics have made recent advances in modeling those questions within a dynamic framework. This dissertation contributes to those efforts.</p><p>Chapter 2 discusses how to model an agent’s location decision when the agent must learn about an exogenous amenity that may be changing over time. The model is applied to estimating the marginal willingness to pay to avoid crime, in which agents are learning about the crime rate in a neighborhood, and the crime rate can change in predictable (Markovian) ways.</p><p>Chapters 3 and 4 concentrate on location decision problems when there are externalities between decision makers. Chapter 3 focuses on the decision of business owners to open a store, when its demand is a function of other nearby stores, either through competition, or through spillovers on foot traffic. It uses a dynamic model in continuous time to model agents’ decisions. A particular challenge is isolating the contribution of spillovers from the contribution of other unobserved neighborhood attributes that could also lead to agglomeration. A key contribution of this chapter is showing how we can use information on storefront ownership to help separately identify spillovers.</p><p>Finally, chapter 4 focuses on a class of models in which families prefer to live</p><p>close to similar neighbors. This chapter provides the first simulation of such a model in which agents are forward looking, and shows that this leads to more segregation than it would have been observed with myopic agents, which is the standard in this literature. The chapter also discusses several extensions of the model that can be used to investigate relevant questions such as the arrival of a large contingent high skilled tech workers in San Francisco, the immigration of hispanic families to several southern American cities, large changes in local amenities, such as the construction of magnet schools or metro stations, and the flight of wealthy residents from cities in the Rust belt, such as Detroit.</p> / Dissertation

I denna studie kommer vi gå igenom forskning kring läxors påverkan av elevers inlärning samt om detta arbetssätt kan bidra till segregation i form av ett upprätthållande av en kunskapsklyfta mellan mer och mindre socioekonomiskt gynnade elever. Alla elever i Sverige har enligt lag rätt till en likvärdig utbildning, oavsett geografisk hemvist och vad för ekonomiska och sociala förutsättningar man har (Skollagen 1 kap. 8§ 9§). Ändå menar vissa forskare att läxor kan vara en bidragande faktor till segregation. I studien använder vi oss av intervjuer som metod för att få reda på vad sju lärare från olika områden i Uppsala län har för uppfattning om den forskning om läxor som finns. Vi analyserar utifrån materialet hur de väljer att reflektera kring detta och forma sin undervisning utifrån den kunskap de besitter. Studien granskar lärarnas resonemang krig ett arbete med eller utan läxor och om lärarna skulle ändra sitt arbetssätt om de hade varit verksamma i ett socioekonomiskt område som skiljer sig från deras nuvarande. Studien berör även huruvida föräldrars inställning till läxor påverkar elevernas förhållningssätt till läxor enligt lärarnas uppfattning.

This is the beginning of a historical novel set in 1960’s Little Rock, Arkansas. The main character, Elsie Robinson, is forced to come home from her life in New York because of the sudden death of her father. She stays to look after her mother. She then meets Freddie, a white man, who somehow feels completely comfortable in her black community. In a time when everything seems to be falling apart, Freddie is a beam of light. If only their relationship weren’t illegal.

This thesis is part of a Swedish Research Council financed project called The School and its Surroundings (Omvärlden och skolan: Vetenskapsrådet, 2005-3440) and is based on a thorough examination of the pedagogical practices that took place in a particular school in a multicultural suburb. A main aim was to analyse these practices and the pupils’ responses to them in relation to descriptions of the school and its needs, attainments and difficulties as provided by the pupils, teachers and others,including the media. The pedagogical practices of the school are based on a particular kind of pedagogy, called Monroe pedagogy. This pedagogy is characterised by strong leadership and places high expectations on pupils. Using ethnographic data, obtained from fieldwork and interviews, and an analysis informed by Bernstein’s theoretical concepts the thesis provides an analysis of the regulation of social interaction in the school and the pupils’ experiences and appreciations of this regulation. As a pedagogical discourse Monroe pedagogy exhibits principles of strong classification and framing (Bernstein, 2003). The thesis is composed of four articles and a kappa. Article one, “Bracketing” backgrounds for an effective school, describes Monroe pedagogy in relation to the school day and pupils’ results. Article two, Pupils’ responses to a saviour pedagogy: An ethnographic study, elaborates on the feedback that pupils at the studied school provide on their education. Article three, The significance of place and pedagogy in an urban multicultural school in Sweden, examines how the location of the school in a ‘multicultural suburb’ is used to attribute deficiencies to pupils and the need for strong leadership and a visible pedagogy. Article four, Complexities and contradictions of educational inclusion: a meta-ethnographic analysis, describes the importance of place for educational expectations and performances in relation to the stigmatisation of the suburban reach and its residents. Collectively the articles depict, principally through an analysis of pupils’ responses, how Riverdale School sells a success concept, based on orderliness, motivation, responsibility and hard work, and how the staff and pupils at the school identify with and believe in this concept. The articles also demonstrate how the pedagogy in use actually fails to become a saviour discourse in practice, as promised, but instead strengthens exclusion and maintains the image of a failing pupil who will be saved from, her-his background and her-his place of residence. / <p>AKADEMISK AVHANDLING som med tillstånd av utbildningsvetenskapliga fakulteten vid Göteborgs universitet för vinnande av doktorsexamen i pedagogiskt arbete framläggs till offentlig granskning fredagen den 6 september, klockan 13.00, M 404, Sandgärdet, Högskolan i Borås.</p>

Abstract Literary portraits of African Americans’ struggles in the United States for a more equal society have provided valuable insights into the pain and hardship they had to endure for a large portion of the United States’ existence. Ralph Ellison’s famous novel Invisible Man is one of those novels and is the primary source for this study. In this novel the unnamed African American protagonist tries to find a place of his own within a segregated society and has to succumb to the white man’s will to be part of American society. Despite the segregation and subjugation, the protagonist believes that he can progress in American society through education, but his development is constantly thwarted because of his skin colour. Ellison utilizes features from the bildungsroman to highlight how differently education works for African Americans and white people, since the traditional progression of the bildungsroman is not possible for the protagonist despite his trying to follow its traditional pattern. The thwarted progression instead seems to move the plot into another type of progression, namely a spiritual progression. I will therefore conclude that education in Invisible Man creates segregation and subjugation and that the protagonist’s progression is subverted into a spiritual progression. How the protagonist’s journey can be subverted is related to how power structures and discourses influence people’s actions and beliefs. I will use Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish and The Archaeology of Knowledge to explain how power structures and discourses enable segregation, subjugation and a spiritual progression. Furthermore, the result will reveal that, because of surrounding power structures and discourses, the protagonist cannot do anything in this American society other than conform to prevailing power structures or hide himself until he knows how to battle these structures. Keywords: Education; Segregation; Bildungsroman; Michel Foucault; African American. / <p>Literary Bachelor Essay</p>