This paper shows a widening in black-white earnings and employment gaps among young men from the mid-1970s through the 1980s. Earnings gaps increased most among college graduates and in the Midwest, while gaps in employment-population rates grew most among dropouts. We attribute the differential widening to shifts in demand for subgroups due to shifting industry and regional employment, the falling real minimum wage and deunionization, the growing supply of black to white workers that was marked among college graduates, and to increased crime among dropouts. The different factors affecting subgroups highlight the economic diversity of black Americans.

Two easily measured variables, size and book‐to‐market equity, combine to capture the cross‐sectional variation in average stock returns associated with market β , size, leverage, book‐to‐market equity, and earnings‐price ratios. Moreover, when the tests allow for variation in β that is unrelated to size, the relation between market β and average return is flat, even when β is the only explanatory variable.

Experimental duopolies are analyzed to answer two questions: Are asymmetric duopolies less likely to collude than symmetric duopolies? Is the time it takes to reach an equilibrium affected by asymmetry? In a repeated game where output is the choice, we have data 19 (respectively, 21) subject pairs where both agents are low-cost (respectively, high-cost) and 25 subject pairs where one agent in high-cost and one is low-cost. Subjects make choices for at least 35 periods. Results indicate that asymmetric markets are less cooperative and take longer to reach equilibrium than symmetric markets.

Recent models of firm investment decisions stressing informational imperfections in capital markets provide a foundation for interpreting evidence that movements in internal finance can predict investment spending, even after one controls for measures of firms' investment opportunities. While such evidence is suggestive, it is often open to other interpretations. We examine these models using data on equipment investment in the U.S. agricultural sector. This sector is particularly interesting because it has experienced large fluctuations in net worth and the profitability of investment, and reasonable measures of net worth can be constructed. Our findings provide support for a class of "internal funds" models of investment under asymmetric information.