D'Amico, Leonardo; Glaeser, Edward L.; Gyourko, Joseph E.; … - National Bureau of Economic Research - 2024
We document a Kuznets curve for construction productivity in 20th-century America. Homes built per construction worker … remained stagnant between 1900 and 1940, boomed after World War II, and then plummeted after 1970. The productivity boom from … consistent with an extensive series of key facts about the nature of the construction sector. The post-1970 productivity decline …