We document that between 50% and 70% of changes in the US wage structure over the last four decades are accounted for by the relative wage declines of worker groups specialized in routine tasks in industries experiencing rapid automation. We develop a conceptual framework where tasks across a...

This paper provides evidence from the US and Denmark that managers with a business degree ("business managers") reduce their employees' wages. Within five years of the appointment of a business manager, wages decline by 6% and the labor share by 5 percentage points in the US, and by 3% and 3...

We study the impact of AI on labor markets, using establishment level data on vacancies with detailed occupational information comprising the near-universe of online vacancies in the US from 2010 onwards. We classify establishments as "AI exposed" when their workers engage in tasks that are...

Over the course of the nineteenth century manufacturing in the United States shifted from artisan shop to factory production. At the same time United States experienced a "transportation revolution", a key component of which was the building of extensive railroad network. Using a newly created...

Most of the estimated effects are small and the signs are not wholly consistent with either model, under the null hypothesis that agriculture was the chief beneficiary of rail access. For example, we find that rail access appears to have increased urbanization, raised the likelihood of...

African-Americans entered the post-Civil War era with extremely low levels of exposure to schooling. Relying primarily on micro-level census data, we describe racial differences in literacy rates, school attendance, years of educational attainment, age-in-grade distributions, spending per pupil,...

We review historical patterns of economic geography' for the United States from the colonial period to the present day. The analysis is framed in terms of two geographic scales: regions and cities. The compelling reason for studying geographic areas of different scales is that models that...

During the nineteenth century the United States urbanized - the share of the population living in urban areas increased - and industrialized - the share of the labor force in manufacturing increased. Our survey of the literature and analyses of census data suggests that a key reason was the...

This paper proposes a new framework for studying the interplay between culture and institutions. We follow the recent sociology literature and interpret culture as a \repertoire", which allows rich cultural responses to changes in the environment and shifts in political power. Specifically, we...