This dissertation is a collection of three studies on topics in economic history and labor economics, in Italy and the United States. The chapters are ordered chronologically, based on the period of interest. In the first chapter, I investigate the causes and consequences of public spending on primary education in post-unitary Italy. In a context of restricted suffrage, I identify political incentives that contributed to expenditure decisions, and I study the effects on school attendance and literacy. The second and third chapters present studies on early-twentieth-century United States. In the second chapter, my co-author Michael Poyker and I study the economics of gender-specific minimum-wage regulations passed by selected states starting in the 1910s. We examine the impact of these laws on earnings and employment, with an additional focus on the mechanisms of substitution between covered and uncovered workers. In the third chapter, I study the labor market outcomes of former prisoners, considering the role played by convict labor. Using Census data spanning from 1920 to 1940, I study the labor-market penalty suffered by ex-prisoners, the determinants of convict labor, and its consequences in terms of postrelease labor-market outcomes.

Creator

• Marchingiglio, Riccardo

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-5jzc-hq64

Subject

• Economics

Language

• en

Alternate Identifier

• etdadmin_upload_756459
• http://dissertations.umi.com/northwestern:15197

Keyword

• Postrelease Outcomes
• School Spending
• Minimum Wage
• Labor Economics
• Labor History
• Convict Labor

Date created

• 2020-01-01

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright