NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH

Empirics of Strategic Interdependence: The Case of the Racial Tipping Point

William Easterly

NBER Working Paper No. 15069
Issued in June 2009
NBER Program(s):   POL

The Schelling model of a "tipping point" in racial segregation, in which whites flee a neighborhood once a threshold of nonwhites is reached, is a canonical model of strategic interdependence. The idea of "tipping" explaining segregation is widely accepted in the academic literature and popular media. I use census tract data for metropolitan areas of the US from 1970 to 2000 to test the predictions of the Schelling model and find that this particular model of strategic interaction largely fails the tests. There is more "white flight" out of neighborhoods with a high initial share of whites than out of more racially mixed neighborhoods

Published: William Easterly, 2009. "Empirics of Strategic Interdependence: The Case of the Racial Tipping Point," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, Berkeley Electronic Press, vol. 9(1).

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