Race, risk, and greed: Harold Black's contributions to the institutional economics of finance

Dr. Harold Black has made a career of investigating the effects of different rules and institutional arrangements on the extent to which market participants in finance can exercise a taste for discrimination. This paper considers the nature of Black's contributions, and reviews some particulars of his voluminous published research, focusing especially on his work on the number of "overages" charged by banks, and the differences in the effects of the race of bank owners, as explained by the race of customers. The paper concludes by connecting Dr. Black’s work to his “origin story,” which helps explain his consistent focus on careful empirical distinctions rather than preconceptions and biases.