In the late nineteenth century, the North American bison was brought to the brink of extinction in just over a decade. We demonstrate that the loss of the bison had immediate, negative consequences for the Native Americans who relied on them and ultimately resulted in a permanent reversal of...

In this paper, we study the effects of immigration on natives' marriage, fertility, and family formation across US cities between 1910 and 1930. Instrumenting immigrants' location decision by interacting pre-existing ethnic settlements with aggregate migration flows, we find that immigration...

For a century, two labor market empirical regularities characterized the movements of the hours of work, employment, and hourly compensation of American manufacturing production workers. They resembled conditional labor supply functions. Increases in employment substituted for reductions in...

This chapter discusses the strong impact of economic forces, and changes in the economic environment, on American Jewish observance and American Jewish religious institutions in the 20th century. Beginning with the immigrants' experience of dramatic economic change between the old country and...

This paper contributes to the literature on the labor market consequences of unhealthy behaviors and poor health by examining a previously underappreciated consequence of the rise in obesity in the United States: challenges for military recruitment. Specifically, this paper estimates the percent...

This paper shows that the gender world record ratio in four disciplines, i.e. marathon, triple jump, pole vault and 800 meters, follows an S-shape over time. It is argued that this pattern is initiated by a sudden drop in the social barrier for women to participate in these disciplines. This...

The cohorts of women born at the turn of the 20th century increased markedly their participation in the labor market when older. These are the first cohorts who worked after their childbearing years. In this paper, we document a link between their work behavior and the Great Depression. We show...

We examine the impact of the Americanization of names on the labor market outcomes of migrants. We construct a novel longitudinal data set of naturalization records in which we track a complete sample of migrants who naturalize by 1930. We find that migrants who Americanized their names...

The past century witnessed a dramatic improvement in public health, the rise of modern medicine, and the transformation of the hospital from a fringe institution to one essential to the practice of medicine. Despite the central role of medicine in contemporary society, little is known about how...