This paper estimates the elasticity of substitution between capital and skill using variation across U.S. counties in immigration-induced skill-mix changes between 1860 and 1930. We find that capital began as a q-complement for skilled and unskilled workers, and then dramatically increased its...

This paper develops a model of firm heterogeneity, technological adoption, and urbanization. In the model, welfare is measured by household real income, and urbanization is measured by population density. I use the model to derive statistics that measure the effect of a new technology on...

A number of conceptually robust and empirically practical approaches are available to assess relative economic performance among producers who operate on either side of an international border. In this paper we discuss the impact that data compilation, methodological choice, and variable...

This paper estimates the elasticity of substitution between capital and skill using variation across U.S. counties in immigration-induced skill-mix changes between 1860 and 1930. We find that capital began as a q-complement for skilled and unskilled workers, and then dramatically increased its...

The key to the development of manufacturing in antebellum Massachusetts is to be found not in newly available technological or organizational blueprints in the manufacturing sector, not in changes in tariff policies, and not in demand shifts (although all of these many have contributed to some...

This paper estimates the elasticity of substitution between capital and skill using variation across U.S. counties in immigration-induced skill-mix changes between 1860 and 1930. We find that capital began as a q-complement for skilled and unskilled workers, and then dramatically increased its...

In a recent paper in Applied Economics, Barr, Mizrach and Mundra test for the existence of a “Skyscraper Curse”. Their results led the Economist magazine to conclude that you cannot forecast the onset of recessions using the announcement or completion dates of the world's tallest building...

How much of the rapid growth in labor productivity in nineteenth century cotton weaving arose from capital-labor substitution and how much from technical change? Using an engineering production function and detailed information on inventions, I find that factor substitution accounts for little...

A current refrain in patent policy discourse is that “overly-broad” patents of “dubious validity” retard innovation. We briefly review expressions of the thesis to show that they reduce to the allegation that disagreements over enforceable patent scope and/or validity harm innovation....

This short history describes the evolution of procurement in the building and construction industry, from the early modern system of craft production in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to the emergence of the general contractor and the professions with modern methods of procurement in...