We evaluate the empirical relevance of de facto vs. de jure determinants of political power in the U.S. South between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. We apply a variety of estimation techniques to a previously unexploited dataset on voter registration by...

This study uses changes in pension laws for Union Army veterans as a natural experiment to estimate the causal effect of pensions on longevity, and to examine potential pathways underlying such a relationship. We examine the effects of the pension laws of 1907 and 1912, which granted old-age...

We study Virginia's suffrage from the early 17th century until the American Revolution using an analytical narrative and econometric analysis of unique data on franchise restrictions. First, we hold that suffrage changes reflected labour market dynamics. Indeed, Virginia's liberal institutions...

WWII induced a dramatic increase in female labor supply, which persisted over time, particularly for women with higher education. Using Census micro data we study the qualitative aspects of this long term increase through the lenses of the occupations women held after the war. Almost two decades...

Minimum wages have been among the most controversial government interventions in labor markets. There have been several waves of minimum wage activity over the past century, beginning with a 1912 Massachusetts law. Since 1938 minimum wages in the United States have been set by a complex array of...

Our research uses data from multiple archival sources to examine substitution among armored (tank-intensive), infantry (troop-intensive), and airborne (also troop-intensive) military units, as well as mid-war reorganizations of each type, to estimate the marginal cost of reducing U.S. fatalities...

A large, mature and robust economic literature on pay for performance now exists, whichprovides a useful framework for thinking about pay for performance systems. I use thelessons of the literature to discuss how to design and implement pay for performance inpractice....

We study effects of a firm's attempt to optimize an existing incentive scheme to increase sales growth for direct store delivery workers. Before optimization workers reported Ratchet Effects that lowered productivity. The altered incentive plan offered higher compensation for increased sales...

This paper investigates the link between product quality and price setting for central processing units (CPUs). Using thousands of price quotes from a popular price-comparison website, we find that market fundamentals, such as the number of sellers, median price, share of convenient prices and...

We use UK micro data to explore whether planning regulation reduced UK retailing productivity growth between 1997 and 2003. We document a shift to smaller shops, particularly within supermarket chains, following a regulatory change in 1996 which increased the costs of opening large stores. This...