The sources of cooperation in small groups are well documented. There is, however, less understanding about cooperation in large groups. I study the enforcement of property rights in the mining camps of the American West. Miners demanded secure property rights and protection from violence to...

I use a new sample of families linked between the 1860 and 1880 U.S. censuses to study the impact of migration to frontier cities on job holding. Using variation in transportation costs between different regions of the country to generate exogenous migration, I find frontier city migration had...