Working Papers

Loans for the “Little Fellow”: Credit, Crisis, and Recovery in the Great Depression.  This version: February 2024.  NBER WP 31779. Conditionally Accepted at American Economic Review.
Abstract: This paper identifies how bank branching benefited local economies during the Great Depression. Using archival data and narrative evidence, I show how Bank of America’s branch network in 1930s California created an internal capital market that diversified away local liquidity shortfalls, allowing the bank to maintain 49 percent higher credit growth from 1929 to 1933 than competing banks. The bank’s presence mitigated cites’ property value contractions and strengthened their recovery through 1940. Linked individual data show that the bank’s proximity to workers hastened the transition from agricultural employment to human-capital-intensive sectors in the 1930s, generating structural change and higher wages.

Causes and Consequences of College Going in the Great Depression with Zachary Bleemer. This Version: October 2021.
Abstract: Labor and credit market conditions both deteriorate in a financial crisis, altering students’ incentives to invest in human capital. In this paper, we characterize changes in parental characteristics, major choice, and labor market outcomes due to the local intensity of the Great Depression. Using a difference-in-difference design and Census data linked to detailed student-level California university registers, we show that California towns with less-severe economic contractions increased college-sending during the crisis. These university enrollees came from lower-socioeconomic-status households than students from towns with worse local economies and tended to enroll at lower-cost public universities in high-return fields of study. As a result, by 1940 they had earned a wage premium even relative to other college-educated workers with similar pre-Depression characteristics. Economic stability during the Great Depression facilitated middle-income households’ human capital investment, increasing later income and promoting intergenerational mobility.

Tasks and Black-White Mobility over the Long Twentieth Century, with Rowena Gray, Siobhan O’Keefe, and Zachary Ward. This Version: January 2024.
Abstract: We present new evidence on the long-run trend of occupational task content, 1900-2021. Relative to whites, Black workers were concentrated in tasks that declined in demand. Longitudinal data suggests that transitions to new task content were racially biased: Blacks moved to jobs with lower rewarded task content than whites, conditional on initial task content, though effects decreased after World War II. Routine-intensive Black workers were less likely to move up into non-routine analytic work compared to white workers in both historical and modern periods. The results suggest that a given task-displacement shock, such as automating routine-manual work, widens Black-white inequality.

Aggregate debt servicing and the limit on private credit with Mathias Drehmann and Mikael Juselius, in preparation for the Research Handbook of Macroprudential Policy, Elgar 2024.

Publications

Old Immigrants, New Niches: Russian Jewish Agricultural Farming Colonies and Native Workers in Southern New Jersey, 1880-1910, with Siobhan O’Keefe. Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences. 2018.
Abstract: The effect of immigration shocks on native workers in a labor niche remains an open question. We test how workers in the farm and nonfarm sectors were affected by the establishment of Russian Jewish agricultural colonies in southern New Jersey in the late nineteenth century. By following the same individuals across the 1880 and 1910 US censuses, we avoid making assumptions about the substitutability of immigrants and native workers. Russian Jews established themselves as farmers or factory workers with the help of international aid societies. Many native workers increased their occupational standing by transitioning to occupations complementary to agricultural and semi-skilled factory work, the immigrants’ main niches. We see no impact on farmers, likely due to the structure of agricultural markets. We also find a decreased probability of out-migration for natives living near a successful agricultural colony, with occupational upgrading concentrated among stayers.

Back to Good Times: The Real Effects of Credit in Great Depression California, Journal of Economic History, 81(2), 586-591, 2021. Dissertation summary. Awarded the Allan Nevins Prize for the best dissertation in North American economic history, 2020.

Boomtowns: Local Shocks and Inequality in 1920s California, with Rowena Gray. AEA Papers and Proceedings, 112, 209-213, 2022. WP version.
Abstract: As the United States economy grew in the 1920s, both wealth and income inequality rose as well. California land values were especially volatile as a variety of shocks buffeted the state. This paper summarizes how these local booms affected housing inequality by linking archival data on city property values to the full count 1930 census. We first characterize the relationship between the type of shock and city property values during the 1920s. Then we relate these real estate market swings to the occupational and housing distribution within and across cities in 1930.

Income Shocks and Housing Spillovers:  Evidence from the World War I Veterans’ Bonus. Journal of Urban Economics. November 2022.  WP version
Abstract: This paper documents how a one-time income shock can alter the household wealth distribution through local housing market channels. In 1936, the United States government unexpectedly gave World War I veterans a large income transfer. This payment, equivalent to 1936 per capita income, greatly improved recipients’ 1940 home values and homeownership rates compared to those of their 1930 neighbors. These home value gaps widened as the spatial intensity of the shock increased but only for likely home purchasers. Loan-level data suggest this combination of direct benefits and negative neighborhood spillovers derived from veterans crowding out other potential borrowers.

Works in Progress

Changes in the College Mobility Pipeline Since 1900 with Zachary Bleemer. 

The Great Depression Bank Deregulation Wave with Chenzi Xu.