Disparities in cross-city pandemic severity during the 1918 Influenza Pandemic remain poorly understood. This paper uses newly assembled historical data on annual mortality across 438 U.S. cities to explore the determinants of pandemic mortality. We assess the role of three broad factors: i)...

This paper studies the effects of the USPTO's patent secrecy program in World War II, under which over 11,000 U.S. patent applications were issued secrecy orders which halted examination and prohibited inventors from disclosing their inventions or filing in foreign countries. Secrecy orders were...

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...

The Producer Price Index (PPI) for the United States suggests that semiconductor prices have barely been falling in recent years, a dramatic contrast to the rapid declines reported from the mid-1980s to the early 2000s. This slowdown in the rate of decline is puzzling in light of evidence that...

This paper compiles the contemporary view on three major Canadian-led trade policies that have marked Canada's economic history since Confederation: the National Policy (1879), the Canada-US Agreement on Automotive Products (Auto Pact, 1965) and the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement (FTA, 1989,...

Electrification among American farm households increased from less than 10 percent to nearly 100 percent over a three decade span, 1930{1960. We exploit the historical rollout of the U.S. power grid to study the short- and long-run impacts of rural electrification on local economies. In the...

Canada played an important role in the postwar establishment of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), yet it was also the first major member to challenge the orthodoxy of the BrettonWoods par value system by abandoning it in 1950 in favour of a floating, market-determined exchange rate....

Air pollution was severe in many urban areas of the United States in the first half of the twentieth century, in part due to the burning of bituminous coal for heat. We estimate the effects of this bituminous coal consumption on mortality rates in the U.S. during the mid-20th century. Coal...

As a result of the current global financial crisis, in 2009 the world economy is likely to experience the largest contraction since World War II and the unemployment rate to reach historical highs in many countries. The fact that the current global crisis is originated from the U.S. and followed...