The monetary powers embedded in the U.S. Constitution were revolutionary and led to a watershed transformation in the nation's monetary structure. They included determining what monies could be legal tender, who could emit fiat paper money, and who could incorporate banks. How the debate at the...

It is often argued that branching stabilizes banking systems by facilitating diversification of bank portfolios; however, previous empirical research on the Great Depression offers mixed support for this view. Analyses using state-level data find that states allowing branch banking had lower...

Four million blacks left the South from 1940 to 1970, doubling the northern black workforce. I exploit variation in migrant flows within skill groups over time to estimate the elasticity of substitution by race. I then use this estimate to calculate counterfactual rates of wage growth. I find...

The 1964 Securities Acts Amendments extended the mandatory disclosure requirements that had applied to listed firms since 1934 to large firms traded Over-the-Counter (OTC). We find several pieces of evidence indicating that investors valued these disclosure requirements, two of which are...

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...

In this paper we compare the performance of the U.S. and Canadian banking systems from 1870-1925 in terms of stability and efficiency. In an earlier study we found that the Canadian banking system, based on nationwide branch banking, dominated the U.S. system, based on unit banking, on both...

Most listed firms are freestanding in the U.S, while listed firms in other countries often belong to business groups: lasting structures in which listed firms control other listed firms. Hand-collected historical data illuminate how the present ownership structure of the United States arose: (1)...

This paper examines the relationship between the structure of banking markets and economic growth using a new dataset on manufacturing industry-level growth rates and banking market concentration for U.S. states during 1899-1929--a period when the manufacturing sector was expanding rapidly and...

The largest 20th-century increase in U.S. home ownership occurred between 1940 and 1960, associated largely with declining age at first ownership. I shed light on the contribution of coincident government mortgage market interventions by examining home loan benefits granted under the World War...

If official interventions convey private information useful for price discovery in foreign-exchange markets, then they should have value as a forecast of near-term exchange-rate movements. Using a set of standard criteria, we show that approximately 60 percent of all U.S. foreign-exchange...