Article- "The Causes and Consequences of Distinctly Black Names"
1. Give a 3 minute summary of the paper. What is the hypothesis of the paper? Why is it interesting or useful?
2. Describe the data. Discuss the summary statistics for Black babies from Table 1.
3. How is the Black name index calculated? What has happened to the mean BNI for Blacks over time? Use Figures 1-5 in your discussion.
4. What do Figures 6 and 7 tell us about racial segregation and its effect on naming?
5. What are "unique" names? Use Figures 8a and 8b to discuss this phenomenon.
6. Who names their children distinctly Black names? Use the results from Table 2 to discuss. Note: Does this vary over time?
7. Discuss the models Levitt and Fryer propose to explain the rise in distinctly Black names. (Ignorance, Price Theory, Signaling, and Identity) Which model do Fryer and Levitt argue best explains the rise? Explain.
8. Do distinctly Black names causally affect life outcomes? How do Levitt and Fryer test this?
9. How can we reconcile the results from this paper with the "Emily and Greg..." paper?
10. Discuss socioeconomic discrimination. What are the problems associated with this kind of discrimination?