We examine portage sites in the U.S. South, Mid-Atlantic, and Midwest, including those on the fall line, a geomorphologic feature in the southeastern U.S. marking the final rapids on rivers before the ocean. Historically, waterborne transport of goods required portage around the falls at these...

While health affects economic development and wellbeing through a variety of pathways, one commonly suggested mechanism is a "horizon" channel in which increased longevity induces additional education. A recent literature devotes much attention to how much education responds to increasing...

Does the lack of wealth constrain parents' investments in the human capital of their descendants? We conduct a fifty-year followup of an episode in which such constraints would have been plausibly relaxed by a random allocation of wealth to families. We track descendants of those eligible to win...

The state of Georgia allocated most of its land to the public through a system of lotteries. These episodes provide unusual opportunities to assess the long-term impact of large shocks to wealth, as winning was uncorrelated with individual characteristics and participation was nearly universal...

We document the correlations between early childhood health (as proxied by height) and educational attainment and investigate the labor market and wealth returns to height for United States cohorts born between 1820 and 1990. The nineteenth century was characterized by low investments in height...

This study examines a wide range of health and economic outcomes in a sample of Irish- and African-American Civil War veterans during the postbellum period. The information in our data is from a variety of circumstances across an individual's life span, and we use that to attempt to explain...

This paper analyzes the Chilean experience with capital flows. We discuss the role played by capital controls, financial regulations and the exchange rate regime. The focus is on the period after 1990, the period when Chile returned to international capital markets. We also discuss the early...

Latin American economies are exposed to substantial external vulnerability. Domestic imbalances and terms of trade shocks are often exacerbated by sudden stops of capital inflow. In this paper we explore ways of overcoming external vulnerability, drawing lessons from a detailed comparison of the...

Microeconomic flexibility, by facilitating the process of creative-destruction, is at the core of economic growth in modern market economies. The main reason for why this process is not infinitely fast, is the presence of adjustment costs, some of them technological, other institutional. Chief...