This paper summarizes the proceedings of "Labor Market Developments in the United States and Canada since 2000," a December 2004 conference cosponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Canadian Consulate General in New York, the Centre for the Study of Living Standards, and the New...

This study is the first of a series of studies, collectively embodying a multiphase mixed methods design. The overall objective of these studies is to explore and address a variety of issues and features of the discipline of economics, particularly as they relate to and represent past present...

We ask (1) why the United States adopted the car more quickly than other countries before 1929, and (2) why in the United States the car changed from a luxury to a mass market good between 1909 and 1919. We argue that the answer is in part the success of the Model T in the United States and its...

Evaluations of an economy's economic performance are often made using a measure of real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, which represents the average remuneration (labour income plus capital services) that an economy generates through domestic production. Because real GDP is a constant...

Lee Ohanian is Associate Professor at the Department of Economics, University of California, Los Angeles. He specializes in macroeconomic theory, the study of business cycles and growth. He has published in the best journals on monetary policy, war finance, VARs, and other topics

This paper examines the impact of mass production on economic development in the United States and Sweden between the 1930s and early 1970s. It suggests that the historical experience in both countries can be used to illustrate a possible pathway for promoting progressive development of the...

Interrogates poverty debate (growth versus redistribution) reignited by underperforming poverty reductions during 1980s' social spending austerity compared to 1960s' "War on Poverty." Growth and inequality explain 75% 1959-1999 poverty variation; census measurement changes 17%. Significantly,...

This paper tests the importance of human capital in explaining convergence across states of the United States after 1880. Human capital levels are found to matter not only to a state's income level but also to its growth rate through technological diffusion. The South's low human capital levels...