This paper analyzes the role of social networks in the diffusion of knowledge and adoption of cultivation techniques, from trainees to the wider community, in the context of an extension project in Guinea-Bissau. In order to test for social learning, we exploit a detailed census of households...

In the American South, post-bellum economic stagnation has been partially attributed to white landowners' access to low-wage black labor; indeed, Southern economic convergence from 1940 to 1970 was associated with substantial black out-migration. This paper examines the impact of the Great...

Scholars differ on whether Federal Reserve intervention mitigated banking panics during the Great Depression and in recent years. The last panic prior to the Depression sheds light on this debate. In April 1929, a fruit fly infestation in Florida forced the U.S. government to quarantine fruit...

Corn prices increased sharply in the summer of 2012 due to expected production shortfalls in the United States, which produces roughly 40% of the world's corn. A heat wave in July adversely affected corn production. We extend earlier statistical models of county-level corn yields in the Eastern...

Most American financial crises of the postbellum gold-standard era were caused by fluctuations in the cotton harvest due to exogenous factors such as weather. The transmission channel ran through export revenues and financial markets under the pre-1914 monetary regime. A poor cotton harvest...