This paper examines the changing employment patterns for young men and women aged 16 to 24 over the 1970s and pays particular attention to the widening racial differences. Between 1970 and 1980 employment rates for both black men and women in this age range fell roughly 14 points relative to...

Societies socialize children about sex. This is done in the presence of peer-group effects, which may encourage undesirable behavior. Parents want the best for their children. Still, they weigh the marginal gains from socializing their children against its costs. Churches and states may...

This paper describes the wealth accumulation of American youth and relates this behavior to their eventual housing choices. We develop a data set that links wealth profiles of youth with constant- quality house prices and tenure choice. A panel data set is compiled for youth age 20-33 for the...

Crack cocaine markets were associated with substantial increases in violence in the U.S. during the 1980s and 1990s. Using cross-city variation in the emergence of these markets, we show that the resulting violence has important long-term implications for understanding current levels of murder...

Migration outflows, especially of young people, may deprive an economy of entrepreneurial energy and innovative ideas. We exploit exogenous variation in emigration from Italian local labor markets to show that between 2008 and 2015 larger emigration flows reduced firm creation. The decline...

Why did the most prosperous colonies in the British Empire mount a rebellion? Even more puzzling, why didn't the British agree to have American representation in Parliament and quickly settle the dispute peacefully? At first glance, it would appear that a deal could have been reached to share...

Using newly-constructed spatially-disaggregated data for London from 1801-1921, we show that the invention of the steam railway led to the first large-scale separation of workplace and residence. We show that a class of quantitative urban models is remarkably successful in explaining this...

The impact of fiscal policy on economic activity is still a matter of great debate. And, ever since Keynes first commented on it, interwar Britain, 1918- 1939, has remained a particularly contentious case | not least because of its high debt environment and turbulent business cycle. This debate...

Proponents of stronger copyright terms have argued that stronger copyright terms encourage creativity by increasing the profitability of authorship. Empirical evidence, however, is scarce, because data on the profitability of authorship is typically not available to the public. Moreover at...

This study provides new evidence on the impact of air pollution in a high-pollution high-mortality setting: London over the century from 1866-1965. I identify pollution effects by comparing detailed new weekly mortality data to the timing of London's famous fog events, which trapped emissions in...