We estimate the long-term effect of public R&D on growth in manufacturing by analyzing new data from the Cold War era Space Race. We develop a novel empirical strategy that leverages US-Soviet rivalry in space technology to isolate windfall R&D spending. Our results demonstrate that public R&D...

Since 1980, US wage growth has been fastest in large cities. Empirically, we show that most of this urban-biased growth reflects wage growth at large Business Services firms, which are also the most intensive users of information and communications technology (ICT) capital in the US economy. We...

The Farmer Field School (FFS) is an intensive training program providing farmers with science based knowledge and practices, including integrated pest management (IPM). Recently there has been intensive debate as to whether or not this kind of training has any significant impact. Most case...

In applied historical research, geographic units often differ in level of aggregation across datasets. One solution is to use crosswalks that associate factors located within one geographic unit to another, based on their relative areas. We develop an alternative approach based on relative...

We develop a framework to estimate the economic value of a recent zoning reform in the city of Sao Paulo, which altered maximum permitted construction at the city-block level. Using a spatial regression discontinuity design, we find that developers file for more multi-family construction permits...

Infrastructure costs in the United States are high and rising. The procurement process is one potential cost driver. In this paper we conduct a survey of procurement practices across the 50 states. We survey both employees at each state department of transportation (DOT) and the road builders...

Infrastructure assets have undergone substantial privatization in recent decades. How do different types of owners target and manage these assets? And does the contract form--control rights (concession) vs. outright ownership (sale)--matter? We explore these questions in the context of global...

The environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) is a hypothesized relationship between various indicators of environmental degradation and income per capita. As economies get richer environmental impacts first rise but eventually fall. In reality, though some types of environmental degradation have been...