This paper investigates the motivations for, and implications of, the Automobile Industry code under the National Industrial Recovery Act. The amended code contained a provision calling for automobile producers to alter the timing of new model introductions and the annual automobile show as a...

This paper takes a retrospective look at the U.S. government's effort to rescue and restructure General Motors and Chrysler in the midst of the 2009 economic and financial crisis. The paper describes how two of the largest industrial companies in the world came to seek a bailout from the U.S....

We use a detailed micro dataset on product availability to construct a direct high-frequency measure of consumer product shortages during the 2020-2021 pandemic. We document a widespread multi-fold rise in shortages in nearly all sectors early in the pandemic. Over time, the composition of...

Industrialization experiences differ significantly across countries. We use a bench-mark model of structural change to shed light on the sources of this heterogeneity and, in particular, the phenomenon of premature deindustrialization. Our analysis leads to three key findings. First, benchmark...

We construct measures of industry performance and welfare in the U.S. car and light truck market from 1980-2018. We estimate a differentiated products demand model for this market using product level data on market shares, prices, and product characteristics, and consumer level data on...

In this paper we present for the first time estimates of cost and efficiency differences between U.S. and Japanese producers based on an econometric cost function methodology rather than the accounting frameworks previously used. We demonstrate that the cost difference estimates for 1979 which...

In this paper we calculate and analyze the automobile industries cost and productivity experience during the 1970 's in Canada, the U.S.and Japan. Utilizing an econometric cost function methodology, we are able to isolate the major source of short-run disequilibrium in this industry-variations'...