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A review of the economics of crime literature provides an unsatisfactory explanation of the higher crime rates among African Americans compared to crime rates for whites in the US. This address challenges economists, particularly African American economists, to come up with new and credible ideas to explain the observed crime differential that could influence policies to decrease crime in the African American community.

This article uses a methodology developed by Hicks & Kubisch and data from a sample of forty countries to investigate the dynamics of defense budgeting in Subsaharan Africa during the 1967-87 period. We find that African countries discriminate against defense in budgeting when budget resources are increasing. On the other hand, they favor defense in budgeting during periods of austerity. This pattern of budgeting increases the defense burden and budget shares in African countries at times when the general population is least able to shoulder such a burden, and hence the need to reallocate defense spending is greatest. We also find that African governments consistently favor defense in the allocation of foreign exchange. The pattern of defense budget allocation in Subsaharan Africa neither varies among the four geographical regions of Subsaharan Africa - West, East, Central and Southern - nor among the oil exporters and the foreign exchange constrained oil importers. This inability to decrease defense spending during periods of austerity implies that those interested in changing budgetary priorities should have to rethink the concept of defense and hence redefine defense in African societies. African defense forces may have to be redirected to be used for development purposes rather than as a fighting organization. This will decrease the conflict between the fiscal needs to decrease defense spending and the reality of inability to do so. Such a reorientation of the military will also reduce the conflict between high defense spending and long-term development in Subsaharan Africa.

This paper uses a disaggregated cross-national time-series aid data and a Least Squares Dummy Variables (LSDV) model to investigate the effects of aid on economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. We find that, contrary to what some critics of aid argue, aid has a small but positive and significant effect on economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. A simultaneous equation specification of the model shows that aid affects economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa directly and indirectly through increased domestic savings and investment.

A four equation - growth rate, defense burden, skilled labor rate, and investment rate - simultaneous model is used to investigate whether increased defense burden increases or decreases economic growth and the channels through which defense burden influences economic growth in Less Developed Countries (LDCs). The model is estimated using cross national data for 39 Subsaharan African countries during the 1973 to 1983 period from ACDA data sources. The estimation procedure is three stage least squares. Defense burden affects economic growth directly through increased demand, technological spin-off, and modernization of attitudes and indirectly through increased supply of skilled labor and decreased investment. The positive effects defense burden has on growth are swamped by the negative effect it has on growth rate through decreased investment. We calculate a defense burden/growth rate multiplier of -0.12. When we re-estimate the model using SIPRI data sources, the qualitative results remain unchanged. The implication of this result is that African countries cannot use increased defense spending to stimulate economic growth because there is a trade-off between high defense burden and economic growth.

The author finds that an increase in the income of the agricultural sector relative to that of the non-agricultural sector decreases income inequality. The growth rate of agricultural production and the proportion of the labor force in the non-agricultural sector were also found to be negatively correlated with income inequality. (DSE)

Empirical models of the supply of criminal offenses in the United States have shown a positive relationship between the proportion of the population that is non-white (RACE) and crime rates. Though non-whites in the United States possess more "criminal capital" than the average person, such studies do not take into consideration this excess criminal capital. Since RACE and the omitted excess criminal capital are correlated, it will pick up the influence of the excess criminal capital. Using cross-sectional data from Florida's municipalities, we show that after adjusting for excess criminal capital, RACE has no significant relationship with crime.