Lee Ohanian is Associate Professor at the Department of Economics, University of California, Los Angeles. He specializes in macroeconomic theory, the study of business cycles and growth. He has published in the best journals on monetary policy, war finance, VARs, and other topics

This paper examines the impact of mass production on economic development in the United States and Sweden between the 1930s and early 1970s. It suggests that the historical experience in both countries can be used to illustrate a possible pathway for promoting progressive development of the...

Interrogates poverty debate (growth versus redistribution) reignited by underperforming poverty reductions during 1980s' social spending austerity compared to 1960s' "War on Poverty." Growth and inequality explain 75% 1959-1999 poverty variation; census measurement changes 17%. Significantly,...

This paper tests the importance of human capital in explaining convergence across states of the United States after 1880. Human capital levels are found to matter not only to a state's income level but also to its growth rate through technological diffusion. The South's low human capital levels...

This paper uses new data on the task content of occupations to present a new picture of the labor market effects of technological change in pre-WWII United States. I show that, similar to the recent computerization episode, the electrification of the manufacturing sector led to a “hollowing...

This article investigates the dynamic relationship between a single pursue of an invention and the general US supply of similar activities in early computing during the 1930-1946 period. The objective is to illustrate how an early scientific state of knowledge affects the efficiency with which...

Male and female labor are imperfect substitutes and some sectors are more suitable for female employment than others. Clearly, expansions of those sectors that use female labor intensively must affect aggregate female labor force participation (FLFP). We suggest that FLFP actually drops when...

Male and female labor are imperfect substitutes and some sectors are more suitable for female employment than others. Clearly, expansions of those sectors that use female labor intensively must affect aggregate female labor force participation (FLFP). We suggest that FLFP actually drops when...

This paper uncovers a counter-intuitive effect of international trade on female labor shares: whenever trade expands, sectors intensive in female labor, female labor shares drop and vice versa. According to our key assumption a rising capital labor ratio closes the gender wage gap. The paper’s...