Beginning around 1880, public health issues and engineering advances spurred the installation of city water and sewer systems. As part of this growth, many cities chose to use lead service pipes to connect residences to city water systems. This choice had negative consequences for child...

In a multiperiod investment framework, firms with high expected growth earn higher expected returns than firms with low expected growth, holding investment and expected profitability constant. This paper forms cross-sectional growth forecasts, and constructs an expected growth factor that yields...

Studies of early U.S. growth traditionally have emphasized real-sector explanations for an acceleration that by many accounts became detectable between 1815 and 1840. Interestingly, the establishment of the nation's basic financial structure predated by three decades the canals, railroads, and...

We investigate how firms adapt to trademark protection, an extensively used but underexamined form of IP protection, by exploring a historical precedent: China's trademark law of 1923---an unanticipated and disapproved response to end foreign privileges in China. By exploiting a unique, newly...