We explored two measures of inequality that described the full income distribution in cities. One measure is an income gini based on family incomes in 1929 for 33 cities and in 1933 for up to 48 cities in 1933 were spread throughout the country. We also estimated gini coefficients that made use of contract rents for renters and implicit rents for home owners for up to 955 cities throughout the country. We were able to expand to all counties when looking at a top-end inequality measure, the number of taxpayers per family. All three measures varied substantially across the country. We show the correlations between the various measures and also estimate the relationship between the measures and various relief programs developed by governments at all levels during the period.

One EU country after the other is moving to restrict public life. The Dutch government has opted for less drastic measures, hoping for herd immunity and relying on the common sense of its people. But the country has still had to make adjustments to its policies.

Not a soul to be seen on Wall Street, cafés closing down in Brooklyn and a field hospital in Central Park: New York City is in the grips of coronavirus. Notes from a week that changed the city.

This paper investigates the effect of a large negative agricultural shock, the boll weevil, on black-white inequality in the first half of the twentieth century. To do this we use complete count census data to generate a linked sample of fathers and their sons. We find that the boll weevil induced enormous labor market and social disruption as more than half of black and white fathers moved to other counties following the arrival of the weevil. The shock impacted black and white sons differently. We compare sons whose fathers initially resided in the same county and find that white sons born after the boll weevil had similar wages and schooling outcomes to white sons born prior to its arrival. In contrast, black sons born after the boll weevil had significantly higher wages and years of schooling, narrowing the black-white wage and schooling gaps. This decrease appears to have been driven by relative improvements in early life conditions and access to schooling both for sons of black fathers that migrated out of the South and sons of black fathers that stayed in the South.

This paper proposes a new methodology for estimating teacher value-added. Rather than imposing a normality assumption on unobserved teacher quality (as in the standard empirical Bayes approach), our nonparametric estimator permits the underlying distribution to be estimated directly and in a computationally feasible way. The resulting estimates fit the unobserved distribution very well regardless of the form it takes, as we show in Monte Carlo simulations. Implementing the nonparametric approach in practice using two separate large-scale administrative data sets, we find the estimated teacher value-added distributions depart from normality and differ from each other. To draw out the policy implications of our method, we first consider a widely-discussed policy to release teachers at the bottom of the value-added distribution, comparing predicted test score gains under our nonparametric approach with those using parametric empirical Bayes. Here the parametric method predicts similar policy gains in one data set while overestimating those in the other by a substantial margin. We also show the predicted gains from teacher retention policies can be underestimated significantly based on the parametric method. In general, the results highlight the benefit of our nonparametric empirical Bayes approach, given that the unobserved distribution of value-added is likely to be context-specific.

Most jobs require teamwork. Are some people good team players? In this paper we design and test a new method for identifying individual contributions to group performance. We randomly assign people to multiple teams and predict team performance based on previously assessed individual skills. Some people consistently cause their group to exceed its predicted performance. We call these individuals “team players”. Team players score significantly higher on a well-established measure of social intelligence, but do not differ across a variety of other dimensions, including IQ, personality, education and gender. Social skills – defined as a single latent factor that combines social intelligence scores with the team player effect – improve group performance about as much as IQ. We find suggestive evidence that team players increase effort among teammates.

German multinational Bayer underestimated the risks of acquiring Monsanto. Now, the company is desperately seeking to contain the damage by selling business divisions and cutting jobs. So far, though, none of these moves have helped.

De Niro, 76, also voiced his support for Joe Biden as a presidential candidate on "The Late Show," and was critical of President Trump’s handling of the response to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Weather extreme enough to shatter records across large swaths of the U.S. is heading our way this weekend, just in time for Mother’s Day. A storm system heading into the Northeast on Friday will smash into the polar vortex as it makes swing down from the Arctic, reported NBC News. This might sock the region in with heavy, wet snow all the way into New England.

Supporters for Ahmaud Arbery, the unarmed black jogger who was fatally shot by two white men on a Georgia road in broad daylight, are planning to run 2.23 miles Friday to celebrate what would be his 26th birthday and call for justice in the case. Organizers of the virtual run are asking people to go for a walk, jog or run and post a photo, video or written message on social media with the hashtag #IRunwithAhmaud.

Things were not OK.

Former NFL star Brett Favre said Wednesday he would repay the state of Mississippi $1.1 million after a state auditor discovered the Mississippi Department of Human Services paid the ex-quarterback for speaking engagements that never happened.

Californians venturing onto the beach after a month of lockdown are being greeted with the ethereal sight of bioluminescent waves from an algae bloom.

The Social Security Administration will not release its list of popular baby names this year.

An extensive search was launched Thursday for a teenager who allegedly stabbed his younger brother to death in the Florida Keys community of Islamorada, authorities said.

They don’t want people bugging out.

A Southwest jet traveling from Dallas fatally struck a person as it touched down at a Texas airport Thursday night, authorities said.

California is slated to be refunded the $247 million it paid to a Chinese car company under a massive $1 billion deal for face masks, which were not federally certified by the agreed upon deadline.

You can always get your mom flowers for Mother’s Day, or chocolate, or your standard Mother’s Day gift. Or, if your mom is anything like mine, you can go in a completely different direction.

The semen of men infected with coronavirus revealed that the disease lingered in only a few patients, suggesting there is a small chance COVID-19 can be transmitted sexually, researchers said.

Gov. Cuomo is down with Robert De Niro portraying him in a movie about the coronavirus pandemic, should there be one, and he also took a moment to play the role of the Manhattan-born actor.

A day after a father and son were charged in the February killing of unarmed jogger Ahmaud Arbery, a Georgia official promised a thorough probe into the case and said the man who filmed the horrific incident is also under investigation. In a news conference Friday morning, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Vic Reynolds said “every stone will be turned over" and if the facts lead agents to make another arrest “they will do that.”

Chris Cornell’s widow is firing back at her husband’s Soundgarden bandmates, calling the lawsuit they filed against her Wednesday an attempt to “browbeat” her into giving up “copyrighted works.”

Ohio State University will pay about $41 million to settle a dozen lawsuits by 162 men alleging sexual abuse by a team doctor, Richard Strauss.

A Boeing 737 ran over a man who was on an Austin, TX runway

The Government is to provide a State guaranteed refund credit note for package holidays booked through Irish travel agents and tour operators in effort to help the industry during Covid-19 crisis.

The Minister for Finance has said the State can afford to continue to fund the measures put in place by the Government to deal with the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic.

This paper takes an early look at the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), a large and novel small business support program that was part of the initial policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We use new data on the distribution of PPP loans and high-frequency micro-level employment data to consider two dimensions of program targeting. First, we do not find evidence that funds flowed to areas more adversely affected by the economic effects of the pandemic, as measured by declines in hours worked or business shutdowns. If anything, funds flowed to areas less hard hit. Second, we find significant heterogeneity across banks in terms of disbursing PPP funds, which does not only reflect differences in underlying loan demand. The top-4 banks alone account for 36% of total pre-policy small business loans, but disbursed less than 3% of all PPP loans. Areas that were significantly more exposed to low-PPP banks received much lower loan allocations. As data become available, we will study employment and establishment responses to the program and the impact of PPP support on the economic recovery. Measuring these responses is critical for evaluating the social insurance value of the PPP and similar policies.

Like many New Yorkers — indeed, many Americans — I’ve looked to Gov. Cuomo’s decisive leadership during the coronavirus crisis. But his Nourish New York initiative, while well-intentioned, is a step in the wrong direction. With federal funds stretched to the limit, why would the governor squander $25 million to bail out the dairy industry, which is rife with disease and cruelty?

The monster who started it, Hitler, was dead, with a coward’s bullet to the head. Also gone was FDR, the man who mobilized a nation and built a worldwide coalition to defeat Germany. As were millions of men who fought in the second war to end all wars to crush an insane regime that had murdered millions of civilian men, women and children, Jew and gentile. Churchill, who stood sometimes alone against the threat, would soon be turned out by the voters.

The COVID-19 crisis is laying bare our city’s extreme racial and economic inequality. Not only have communities of color borne the brunt of the pandemic, but workers of color make up 75% of New York’s essential workers, the people who are risking their health to provide the services on which we all rely.

Our country is reeling under the dual onslaught of COVID-19 and runaway unemployment, but there’s one person who’s willing to give President Trump high marks for handing the situation: Donald Trump. “I think in a certain way, maybe our best work has been on what we’ve done with COVID-19,” he mused in an interview this week.

The nation lurches toward November as a weakened giant. When Americans decide whether to end or extend the tenure of a reckless president, they will also be voting up or down on whether the rule of law and official accountability remain hallmarks of a great republic.

Former NBA guard Shannon Brown was arrested recently after shooting a rifle in a mixup at his home.

Trump vividly recalls the overtures he made to rebuild the 39-story tower in the early 2000s and posits that he could have done a better job with the $2.3 billion project, which took about three years longer than anticipated and came in more than $400 million over budget.

Switzerland paid $3.48 million for a four-bedroom, 5,300-square-foot condo in the Pinnacle building in downtown Chicago.