The authors examine portage sites in the U.S. South, Mid-Atlantic, and Midwest, including those on the fall line, a geomorphological feature in the southeastern U.S. marking the final rapids on rivers before the ocean. Historically, waterborne transport of goods required portage around the falls...

Many cities in North America formed at obstacles to water navigation, where continued transport required overland hauling or portage. Portage sites attracted commerce and supporting services, and places where the falls provided water power attracted manufacturing during early industrialization....

Workers change occupation and industry less often in more densely populated areas, a relationship that had not been previously reported. This reduced-form result is robust to standard demographic controls, as well as to including aggregate measures of human capital and sectoral mix. Analysis of...

We examine portage sites in the U.S. South, Mid-Atlantic, and Midwest, including those on the fall line, a geomorphologic feature in the southeastern U.S. marking the final rapids on rivers before the ocean. Historically, waterborne transport of goods required portage around the falls at these...

We contrast evidence of urban path dependence with efforts to analyze calibrated models of city sizes. Recent evidence of persistent city sizes following the obsolescence of historical advantages suggests that path dependence cannot be understood as the medium-run effect of legacy capital but...

Using U.S. Census microdata, the authors show that, on average, workers change occupation and industry less in more densely populated areas. The result is robust to standard demographic controls, as well as to including aggregate measures of human capital and sectoral mix. Analysis of the...

This paper presents new, computationally efficient algorithms for solution and estimation of nonlinear dynamic rational expectations models. The innovations in the algorithms are as follows: (1) The entire solution path is obtained simultaneously by taking a small number of Newton steps, using...

In this paper, I study long-run population changes across U.S. metropolitan areas. First, I argue that changes over a long period of time in the geographic distribution of population can be informative about the so-called \resilience" of regions. Using the censuses of population from1790 to...

We present theory and evidence highlighting the role of natural amenities in neighborhood dynamics, suburbanization, and variation across cities in the persistence of the spatial distribution of income. Our model generates three predictions that we confirm using a novel database of...