Using the postal service as an example, this article highlights the critical role played by a series of “implicit” judgments when estimating the government earnings differential. Regression estimates demonstrate that alternative treatments of location, gender, industry, occupation and union...

This Article does four things. First, it explains how to provide new incentives for people to buy USPS money transfers through the Sure Money/Dinero Seguro Program (SM/DS). The Article also describes how a subsequent increase in USPS money transfer sales could expand local tax bases. Third, it...

The United States federal government preempted anti-competitive state and municipal telegraph regulations when the 1866 Post Roads Act was enacted. The act granted a de facto national franchise to build and operate a telegraph system anywhere in the United States to any telegraph company...

This article places the British and American postal telegraph movements in the broader context of a transatlantic reform tradition. More specifically, British nationalization in 1870 gave American reformers both a rallying point and a rationale for postalizing the telegraphs. The legacies of...

We use newly digitized records from the U.S. Post Office to study how strengthening state capacity affects public service delivery and innovation in over 2,800 cities between 1875-1905. Exploiting the gradual expansion of a major civil service reform, cities with a reformed postal office...