Dr. Patricia Posey (University of Chicago) has been selected to receive the 2024 Best Paper in Urban Entrepreneurship Award for her paper “The Role of Race, Class, and the Density of High-Cost Financial Markets.”
This award seeks to recognize research presented at the 2023 UAA Conference as part of the Special Track on Urban Entrepreneurship sponsored by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.
AWARD COMMITTEE ASSESSMENT
“Dr. Posey’s paper explores the prevalence of check cashing and other fringe economy services in neighborhoods. Previous studies have identified the factors that contribute to the increase in high-cost financial services such as payday lending, and check-cashing services and that racial minorities are more likely to be excluded from traditional banking services, thus resorting to fringe economy services. The paper fills a gap in the literature by examining how and why high-cost financial market density varies across neighborhood political economies and develops a racialized political economy perspective. This paper uses a dataset of all zip codes in the United States to examine how race and class composition affect fringe economy density in a neighborhood. The paper finds that fringe economy services density is lower in communities with higher-incomes. However, the findings also show that high-income neighborhoods with higher percentages of Black residents exhibit higher fringe economy service locations compared to similarly high-incomed neighborhoods with a high percentage of White residents. It is a timely paper that makes an important contribution to the field, providing insight into a new aspect of the prevalence of the fringe economy services.”
AWARD RECIPIENT BIO
Patricia Posey earned her PhD in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania and is currently an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. Her research broadly examines the relationship between race and American political economy, focusing on links between capitalism, urban space, and political behavior, drawing from her expertise as a mixed methodologist. Her current book project examines the political and financial inclusion of racial and ethnic minorities in the US. She has work forthcoming or published in academic outlets, such as The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science and Journal of Research on Adolescence, and public outlets, such as the Politics of Color and The Washington Post. She was awarded a Russell Sage Foundation Gates Foundation Pipeline Grant to support new work exploring race, class, and COVID-19 and the Susan Clarke Young Scholar award from the American Political Science Association’s Urban and Local Politics section. Prior to joining the Political Science Department at the University of Chicago, she was a Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Chicago, a pre-doctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Digital Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania.
AWARD PRESENTATION
The formal presentation of this award will be made at the upcoming International Conference on Urban Affairs in New York at the Marriott Marquis Hotel. The theme of this year’s conference is Cities on the Edge: Promoting Equity and Resiliency through Research, Activism, Planning and Policy. The conference will convene over 1200 participants from 55+ countries and representing 20+ fields of study. All award recipients will be formally recognized for their achievements during the Awards and Recognition Program on April 24, 2024; 4:30 – 5:30pm.
AWARD COMMITTEE MEMBERS
Christian King, University of Central Florida (Chair); Sylvie L. Guezeon, University of Minnesota; Sara O’Connor, University of California, Irvine; Seva Rodnyansky, Occidental College
ABOUT THE URBAN AFFAIRS ASSOCIATION
The Urban Affairs Association (UAA) is an international professional organization for 700+ urban scholars, researchers, policy analysts, & public service providers. UAA is dedicated to creating interdisciplinary spaces for engaging in intellectual and practical discussions about urban life. Through theoretical, empirical, and action-oriented research, UAA fosters diverse activities to understand and shape a more just and equitable urban world.
In addition to hosting an annual conference, UAA sponsors ongoing professional development opportunities; Upsilon Sigma: The Urban Studies Honor Society; and two peer-reviewed journals, the Journal of Urban Affairs and the Journal of Race, Ethnicity and the City. You can find UAA on the web, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
