TY  - JOUR
AU  - Bodenhorn,Howard
AU  - Ruebeck,Christopher S.
TI  - The Economics of Identity and the Endogeneity of Race
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 9962
PY  - 2003
Y2  - September 2003
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9962
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9962.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Howard Bodenhorn
John E. Walker Department of Economics
College of Business and Behavioral Science
201-B Sirrine Hall
Clemson University
Clemson, SC 29634
Tel: 864/656-4335
E-Mail: bodenhorn@gmail.com

Christopher Ruebeck
Simon Center
Department of Economics
Lafayette College
Easton, PA 18042
http://sites.lafayette.edu/ruebeckc/
E-Mail: ruebeckc@lafayette.edu
AB  - Economic and social theorists have modeled race and ethnicity as a form of personal identity produced in recognition of the costliness of adopting and maintaining a specific identity. These models of racial and ethnic identity recognize that race and ethnicity is potentially endogenous because racial and ethnic identities are fluid. We look at the free African-American population in the mid-nineteenth century to investigate the costs and benefits of adopting alternative racial identities. We model the choice as an extensive-form game, where whites choose to accept or reject a separate mulatto identity and mixed race individuals then choose whether or not to adopt that mulatto identity. Adopting a mulatto identity generates pecuniary gains, but imposes psychic costs. Our empirical results imply that race is contextual and that there was a large pecuniary benefit to adopting a mixed-race identity.
ER  -