This dissertation is a collection of three studies on topics in economic history and labor economics, in the United States. In the first chapter, I investigate the relationship between temporary paternal absence and long-term labor market outcomes. Specifically, I exploit the natural experiment of fathers’ WWII conscription, combined with longitudinal...
In my dissertation, I explore the connection between economic history and political economy in three ways.Chapter 1, studies the effects of a postal program in the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century and its role in increasing access to higher education. Chapter 2, co-authored with Alexey Makaring and...
Chapter 1: If patients can be persuaded to switch between licensed providers on the basis of authoritative opinions, policy-makers can harness such reporting as a tool to implement incentives for high-quality care. I employ the landmark Flexner Report (1910) medical school evaluations to show that existing consumer beliefs and market-specific...
This dissertation is the culmination of a four-year project on local governments and local economic activity during the Great Depression in the United States (1929 - 1937). Chapter 1 investigates how U.S. municipal governments coped during the Depression and studies whether debt-induced financial constraints affected local public good provision. Local...
There is a paradox at the center of twenty-first century American poverty. On the one hand, American poverty seems to have become an object of significant interest (at least to scholars and to the reading public)—as evidenced through the surge of wildly successful non-fiction books about poverty. On the other...
This thesis studies social protest in colonial Korea (1910-1945). In the first two chapters, I study protest by Koreans against the Japanese colonial authority. In particular, I focus on the March First Movement in 1919, the largest anti-colonial independence movement during the colonial era, and examine its propagation (chapter 1)...
This dissertation studies three topics in 19th and early 20th century economic history. Chapter 1 studies the causes behind low inter-regional migration from the American North to the South prior to the Civil War. Chapters 2 and 3 focus on topics in the economic history of Egyptian agriculture. Chapter 2...
This dissertation contains three empirical studies in economic history and labor economics. The first chapter discusses two sources of historical data on work stoppages in the United States: the Third Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor (1888) and the Tenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor (1896). It...