Has economic progress increased the relative earnings of females to males over the long run? Evidence on trends in the earnings gap for the last four decades appears to run counter to this hypothesis. Numerous data sources are used in this paper to piece together a 170-year history of the...

The history of coeducation in U.S. higher education is explored through an analysis of a database containing information on all institutions offering four-year undergraduate degrees that operated in 1897, 1924, 1934, or 1980, most of which still exist today. These data reveal surprises about the...

The labor force participation rate of married women first declines and then rises as countries develop. Its þ-shape is revealed both across the process of economic development and through the histories of currently advanced countries. The initial decline in the participation rate is due to the...

We explore the savings behavior and saving rates of ordinary Americans through their accounts at the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society. the oldest mutual savings bank in the United States founded in 1816 to encourage thrift among the working poor. Our sample contains the 2.374 accounts opened in...

Two opposing views of the antebellum economy are tested. One is that aggregate economic activity was severely diminished and that unemployment was substantial and prolonged during several downturns. The alternative interpretation is that antebellum fluctuations were more apparent than real;...

This paper investigates changes in the output and productivity of research and development activities in Japanese manufacturing firms over the 1980s and 1990s. Evidence from aggregate patent and R&D statistics and a micro-level analysis of R&D productivity at the firm-level suggest that there...

Recent empirical work has examined the extent to which international trade fosters international spillovers' of technological information. FDI is an alternate, potentially equally important channel for the mediation of such knowledge spillovers. I introduce a framework for measuring...

The existence of strong spillover' effects of private R&D increases the potential social contribution of R&D but may depress the private incentives to undertake it. R&D consortia offer a potentially effective means of internalizing this externality, and a number of prominent economists have...