Book-length and comparative study of ethnic economies, including the origins of the concept, size and prevalence of ethnic economies, class and ethnic resources, informal economy, and forms of disadvantage. Only chapters by Ivan Light are included.

At a time when states, armed insurgent movements, and ethnic and nationalist political parties make claims based on the defence of communal interests and political and religious ideologies – with often deadly consequences – it is important to understand the discourses and actions that are used to legitimize these claims. This book argues that competing moral economies – the beliefs and practices that normatively regulate and legitimize the distribution of wealth, power, and status in a society – play an important role in ethnic and nationalist conflict. Bringing together international experts on the politics of ethnicity and nationalism, this final volume in the prestigious EDG series investigates how moral economies have been challenged in identity-based communities in ways that precipitate or exacerbate conflicts. The combination of theoretical chapters and case studies ranging from Africa and Asia to North America provides compelling evidence for the value of moral economy analysis in understanding problems associated with ethnic and nationalist mobilization and conflict.

Brendan O’Flaherty brings the tools of economic analysis—incentives, equilibrium, optimization—to bear on racial issues. From health care, housing, and education, to employment, wealth, and crime, he shows how racial differences powerfully determine American lives, and how progress in one area is often constrained by diminishing returns in another.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1980.

Examines the economic motivations and complications that drove ethnic cleansing in the post-World War II Sudetenland.

We present a model that links heterogeneity of preferences across ethnic groups in a city to the amount and type of public good the city supplies. We test the implications of the model with three related datasets: US cities, US metropolitan areas, and US urban counties. Results show that productive public goods -- education, roads, libraries, sewers and trash pickup -- in US cities (metro areas/urban counties) are inversely related to the city's (metro area's/county's) ethnic fragmentation, even after controlling for other socioeconomic and demographic determinants. Ethnic fragmentation is negatively related to the share of local spending on welfare. The results are mainly driven by observations in which majority whites are reacting to varying sizes of minority groups. We conclude that ethnic conflict is an important determinant of local public finances.