Macroeconomists have long debated the aggregate effects of anti-competitive provisions under the “Codes of Fair Conduct” promulgated by the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA). Despite the emphasis on these provisions, there is only limited evidence documenting any actual effects at the...

Although Nigeria's Benin region was a major rubber producer in 1960, the industry faltered before 1921. I use labor scarcity and state capacity to explain why rubber did not take hold in this period. The government was unable to protect Benin's rubber forests from over-exploitation. Plantations...

This essay examines how the Banking Acts of the 1933 and 1935 and related New Deal legislation influenced risk taking in the financial sector of the U.S. economy. The analysis focuses on contingent liability of bank owners for losses incurred by their firms and how the elimination of this...

This paper examines under which conditions religious denomination affects public spending on schooling and educational performance. We employ a unique data set which covers, inter alia, information on numerous measures of public school inputs in 169 Swiss districts for the years 1871/72, 1881/82...

This article documents and examines the integration of markets across the early modern/late modern divide, exploiting the largest dataset compiled to date on grain prices, spanning one hundred European cities evenly spread across land-locked and low-land areas. Using those series, it studies...

This paper uses new data on the task content of occupations to present a new picture of the labor market effects of technological change in pre-WWII United States. I show that, similar to the recent computerization episode, the electrification of the manufacturing sector led to a “hollowing...

What were income trends before the Industrial Revolution? Clark (2007b) argued both theoretically and empirically that pre-industrial income fluctuated, but was not trending upwards, a position Persson (2008) labeled “the Malthus Delusion.” Clark (2010a), in particular, estimated that...

Women's suffrage led to one of the greatest enfranchisements in history. Voting rights, however, were not won by force or threats thereof, a fact leading political economy theories find hard to explain. Studying the timing of suffrage extensions in US states between 1869 and 1919, we find that a...

We show how the silver standard transmitted world silver price fluctuations into China and made the Chinese price level closely linked to the world silver price. Inflation was transmitted between 1929 and 1931 when the world silver price was falling; while deflation was transmitted during 1932...

Using the business cycle accounting framework [Chari V., P. Kehoe and E. McGrattan 2007. Business cycle accounting. Econometrica 75, 781–836.], this paper sheds new light on the French Great Depression. Frictions that reduce the efficiency with which factor inputs are used (efficiency wedge)...