Working Papers

Tasks and Black-White Mobility over the Long Twentieth Century, with Rowena Gray, Siobhan O’Keefe, and Zachary Ward. This Version: May 2024. NBER WP 32545. Revise and Resubmit at Journal of Human Resources.
Abstract: We present new evidence on the long-run trend of occupational task content by race in the United States, 1900-2021. Black workers began the transition to better paid, cognitive-intensive modern jobs at least a generation after white workers; substantial convergence only occurred from 1960 onwards. Longitudinal data suggests that transitions to new task content were racially biased: Black men moved to jobs with lower rewarded task content than white men, conditional on initial task content, though gaps 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 task-displacement shocks, such as automating routine-manual work, widen Black-white inequality.

Changes in the College Mobility Pipeline Since 1900, with Zachary Bleemer. This Version: December 2024.
Going to college has long conferred a large wage premium. We show that the relative premium received by lower-income college-goers has halved since the 1960s. We decompose the steady rise in American higher education’s regressivity using dozens of survey and administrative datasets that document 1900–2020 wage premiums and the composition and value-added of collegiate institutions and majors. Three trends explain two-thirds of rising collegiate regressivity. First, the less-selective and public institutions that disproportionately enroll lower-income students have declined in economic value. Second, lower-income students are increasingly over-represented in America’s shrinking community college sector since 1990. Third, higher-income students have driven declining humanities enrollment and expanding computer science enrollment since the 2000s, increasing their degrees’ value. Differential selection and shifts between four-year institutions are second-order. College-going provided equitable returns before 1960, but collegiate regressivity has curtailed higher education’s potential to reduce inequality and mediates 25 percent of intergenerational income transmission.

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 2025. Long-run DSR components. BIS summary.
Abstract: This paper reviews the debt service ratio (DSR) as a theoretically well-grounded indicator of systemic risk. The DSR has the desirable feature that it fluctuates around a stable level which makes its early warning signals easy to understand and communicate.  In contrast, current early warning indicators (EWIs) based on credit-developments lack clear economic interpretations and require statistical detrending, which can reduce their accuracy and usefulness for macroprudential policymakers. The review of the literature shows that the DSR provides highly accurate early warning signals for crises and future economic slowdowns, outperforming traditional credit-based indicators. By extending the measurement of the DSR back to the 1920s – a novel contribution in this chapter – we demonstrate its EWI effectiveness across different historical periods and show that the DSR acts as an upper limit on benign financial deepening. The chapter also outlines questions for future research.

Publications

Loans for the “Little Fellow”: Credit, Crisis, and Recovery in the Great Depression.  American Economic Review, 114 (12): 3905–43, 2024. NBER WP 31779. Gated version. Replication package.
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.

Income Shocks and Housing Spillovers:  Evidence from the World War I Veterans’ Bonus. Journal of Urban Economics. November 2022.  WP version. Gated 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.

Boomtowns: Local Shocks and Inequality in 1920s California, with Rowena Gray. AEA Papers and Proceedings, 112, 209-213, 2022. WP version. Gated version. Replication package.
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.

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

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.

Works in Progress

Branching Out: Bank Deregulation and Long-Run Growth with Chenzi Xu.
Abstract: We document that one of the largest waves of bank deregulation in the United States occurred in the immediate aftermath of the Great Depression when states meaningfully relaxed limitations on bank branching for the first time. By the eve of the interstate branching deregulations of the 1970s, over 70% of banking offices were already part of a branch network. The overall prevalence of branching belies significant and persistent geographic heterogeneity, as the regulatory changes in the 1930s varied significantly across states and remained largely unchanged in the subsequent decades. These differences had persistent real impact: early deregulators experienced significantly higher deposit growth and real manufacturing value added growth until the 1990s. Using a novel dataset of branch-level balance sheets, we find that these effects are consistent with enhanced banks’ internal capital markets allocating capital to less financially developed areas.

Junior colleges and human capital, with Zachary Bleemer.