Showing 1 - 10 of 13
How much of the spatial distribution of economic activity today is determined by history rather than by geographic fundamentals? And if history matters for the distribution, does it also affect overall efficiency? This paper develops a tractable theoretical and empirical framework that aims to...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012482278
This paper provides an account of the complex changes taking place within New England in the years from 1880 to 1940. After 1880, technological changes and market shifts undermined the sources of comparative advantage that had promoted the concentration of textile and footwear production within...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012471892
We examine the relationship between urban characteristics in 1960 and urban growth (income and population) between 1960 and 1990. Our major findings are that income and population growth move together and both types of growth are (1) positively related to initial schooling, (2) negatively...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012473880
Do poor economies grow faster than rich ones? This important economic question (which we call [beta]-convergence) is … of convergence in both countries: poor prefectures and states grow faster. We also find that there is intraregional as … well as interregional convergence. We analyze the cross sectional standard deviation across prefectures and states. We find …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012474942
We examine the golden age of U.S. innovation by undertaking a major data collection exercise linking historical U.S. patents to state and county-level aggregates and matching inventors to Federal Censuses between 1880 and 1940. We identify a causal relationship between patented inventions and...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012455633
Between 1880 and 1920, the US agricultural employment share fell from 50% to 25%. However, despite aggregate demand shifting away from their sector of specialization, rural labor markets saw faster wage growth and industrialization than non-agricultural parts of the US. We propose a spatial...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013388845
We study the joint process of urbanization and industrialization in the US economy between 1880 and 1940. We show that only a small share of aggregate industrialization is accounted for by the relocation of workers from remote rural areas to industrial hubs like Chicago or New York City....
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013537768
This essay discusses the reasons for and implications of the decline in real interest rates around the world over the past several decades. It suggests that the decline in interest rates is largely explicable from trends in saving, growth, and markups. In this environment, greater government...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013210052
We estimate the unconditional distribution of the marginal propensity to consume (MPC) using clustering regression applied to the 2008 economic stimulus payments. By deviating from the standard approach of estimating MPC heterogeneity using interactions with observables, we can recover the full...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014544800
We study the role of firms' political influence on the effectiveness of government spending using ARRA as a laboratory. Through an IV approach, we show that a 10 percentage points increase in the share of politically connected spending lowers the job creation effect of stimulus by 33 percent at...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014576603