This paper examines the endogenous interaction between the rise in female labor force participation and changes in both the method and mode of production that occurred during the early part of the 20th century. Within a dynamic general equilibrium framework, an exogenous expansion in the skill...

There is a growing literature comparing the current financial crisis or Great Recession to the worst economic crisis of capitalism, the Great Depression. However, the role of rising income inequality, which has risen dramatically before both crises, is rarely discussed. In this paper we discuss...

This paper discusses the rise of top-end inequality and its effects on household consumption, saving, and debt in the United States during the 1920s by applying a non-standard theory of consumption, the relative income hypothesis, to the period of interest. Analysing the relevant data...

There is a large body of literature analyzing the onset of the Great Depression or the factors influencing economic recovery in the 1930s, especially the New Deal. The role of income inequality before and during the Great Depression, however, has almost never been discussed thoroughly. This...

By the beginning of the 20th century, the possibility and efficacy of economic planning was believed to have been proven by totalitarian experiments in Germany, the Soviet Union, and, to a lesser degree, Fascist Italy; however, the possibilities and limitations of planning in capitalist...

Electricity is a general purpose technology and the catalyst for the second industrial revolution. Developing countries are currently making huge investments in electrification, with a view to achieving structural change. What does history say about its impact on the structure of employment? We...

Electricity is a general purpose technology and the catalyst for the second industrial revolution. What was its impact on the structure of employment? We use U.S. Census data from 1910 to 1940 and measure electrification with the length of higher-voltage electricity lines. Instrumenting for...

This paper presents 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 out" of the skill distribution whereby workers in the...

We develop an equilibrium model of the labor market to investigate the joint evolution of gender gaps in labor force participation and wages. We do this overall and by task-based occupation and skill, which allows us to study distributional effects. We structurally estimate the model using data...

We examine the effect of joint custody on marriage, divorce, fertility and female employment in Austria using individual-level administrative data, covering the entire population. We also use unique data obtained from court records to analyze the effect on post-divorce outcomes. Our estimates...