Urban Space,Restrictive Covenants and the Origins of Racial Residential Segregation in a US City, 1900–50

Many studies have examined the role of racial prejudice and discrimination in the creation of racial residential segregation in US cities. Yet few researchers have situated early twentieth‐century meanings of race and racism within broader processes of urban development and the emergence of the modern real estate industry. Using a case study of Kansas City, Missouri, this article examines the organized efforts of community builders and homeowner associations to create racially homogeneous neighborhoods through the use and enforcement of racially restrictive covenants. Racially restrictive covenants encoded racial difference in urban space and helped nurture emerging racial prejudices and stereotypes that associated black residence with declining property values, deteriorating neighborhoods and other negative consequences. I argue that the cultivation and development of this segregationist ideology was simultaneously an exercise in the racialization of urban space that linked race and culturally specific behavior to place of residence in the city. As the twentieth century progressed, the identification of black behavior and culture with deteriorating neighborhoods became an important impetus and justification for exclusionary real estate practices designed to create and maintain the geographical separation of the races and control metropolitan development. I conclude with a discussion of how the linkage between race, racism and urban space helps to explain why racial residential segregation remains a persistent and tenacious feature of US metropolitan areas despite the passage of fair housing and numerous anti‐discrimination statutes over the past decades. Nombre d'études ont porté sur l'incidence des préjugés raciaux et de la discrimination sur la ségrégation raciale apparue dans l'habitat des villes américaines. En revanche, peu de chercheurs ont replacé les notions de race et de racisme en ce début de millénaire dans le cadre des processus plus larges d'aménagement urbain et d'émergence de l'immobilier moderne. À partir d'une étude de cas sur Kansas City (Missouri), cet article examine les efforts d'associations locales de propriétaires d'habitations et de constructeurs de logements sociaux qui se sont organisées afin de créer des quartiers homogènes sur le plan racial via l'utilisation et l'application de conditions locatives restrictives. Ces restrictions ont codifié une différence raciale dans l'espace urbain et contribuéà entretenir les préjugés raciaux et stéréotypes associant l'habitat noir à la dévalorisation de l'immobilier, à la détérioration des quartiers et à d'autres effets négatifs. L'article démontre que maintenir et développer cette idéologie ségrégationniste constituait parallèlement une opération de racialisation de l'espace urbain, une race et un comportement culturel spécifique se trouvant liés à un lieu de résidence dans la ville. Au cours du XXe siècle, l'identification du comportement et de la culture noirs à des quartiers dégradés a stimulé et justifié des pratiques immobilières d'exclusion visant à créer et à préserver la séparation géographique des races, tout en contrôlant l'aménagement métropolitain. Pour terminer, l'article aborde de quelle manière l'établissement d'un lien entre race, racisme et espace urbain permet d'expliquer les raisons pour lesquelles la ségrégation raciale de l'habitat persiste dans les zones métropolitaines américaines et ce, malgré l'adoption, au cours des dernières décennies, de l'accès universel au logement et de nombreuses lois contre les discriminations.     

Efficiency and productivity of the US banking industry, 1998–2005: evidence from the Fourier cost function satisfying global regularity conditions

This paper provides estimates of bank efficiency and productivity in the United States, over the period from 1998 to 2005, using (for the first time) the globally flexible Fourier cost functional form, as originally proposed by Gallant ( 1982 ), and estimated subject to global theoretical regularity conditions, using procedures suggested by Gallant and Golub ( 1984 ). We find that failure to incorporate monotonicity and curvature into the estimation results in mismeasured magnitudes of cost efficiency and misleading rankings of individual banks in terms of cost efficiency. We also find that the largest two subgroups (with assets greater than 1 billion in 1998 dollars) are less efficient than the other subgroups and that the largest four bank subgroups (with assets greater than $ 400 million) experienced significant productivity gains and the smallest eight subgroups experienced insignificant productivity gains or even productivity losses. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Making Distribution Markets: Market‐Wide Institutions in French and American Bicycle Distribution, 1865–1914

Scholars usually analyze market‐making within specific parameters. Market sociologists analyze institutions primarily between competitors; global value chain scholars study institutional innovation along exchange sequences; and varieties of capitalism scholars examine national institutional frameworks. I analyze how entrepreneurs and trade associations used “market‐wide” institutions such as exhibitions and publications in French and American bicycle distribution systems between 1865 and 1914 to improve exchange efficiencies and to influence other market actors and the markets' environments. I argue that market‐makers adjusted these institutions to market conditions, and also to national institutional frameworks. The findings present opportunities for further research in competition and exchange institutions.