The Price of Housing in the United States, 1890–2006
13/03/2026
Abstract: We construct the first annual market rent and home sales price series for American cities over the twentieth century using 2.7 million newspaper real
Welcome to our archive of working papers, articles and monographs written by CEPH members.
This collection encompasses an array of themes and represents the cutting edge of the economic history discipline.
Submit content for consideration to ceph@tcd.ie.
Abstract: We construct the first annual market rent and home sales price series for American cities over the twentieth century using 2.7 million newspaper real
Abstract: This paper investigates the effects of the U.S.-China trade war on labor market outcomes in a third country, Vietnam. We exploit variation in the
Abstract: In this paper, we examine the transplantation of British company law into the Cape Colony in the late nineteenth century. The Cape Colony Companies
Abstract: We argue that measurement error in historical price data has led researchers to erroneously believe that there was little persistence of inflation during the
Abstract: This article uses the Cuberes and Teignier (2018) model to study the quantitative effects of gender inequalities on entrepreneurship and labor force participation in
Abstract: While existing evidence shows that nation-building policies unify societies, little is known about how and what makes some societal groups to resist them. We
Abstract: This paper evaluates how a major policy shift—the suspension of the gold standard in September 1931—affected employment outcomes in interwar Britain. We use a
Abstract: We define applied economic history as the systematic use of historical reasoning to address economic policy problems. Building on work in applied history, we
Abstract: This paper investigates the causal effects of sovereign debt crises in a sample of 50 defaulting economies between 1870 and 2010. As default is
Abstract: This paper examines how applied history can contribute to policymaking when understood as a way of structuring judgement under uncertainty rather than as a
Abstract: This paper evaluates the usefulness of crowd-sourced Chinese genealogical data for quantitative research in demography and economic history. I first examine whether genealogies —
Abstract: Speculation has long been thought to have significant economic effects, but it is difficult to measure, making it challenging to examine these effects empirically.
Abstract: Gerschenkron (1962) argued that public institutions such as the State Bank of the Russian Empire spurred the country’s industrialization. We test this assertion by
Abstract: An influential strand of literature within economics and economic history called ‘persistence studies’ argues that low material living standards in African countries today were
Abstract: This paper uses a novel dataset and the general equilibrium model in Desmet and Rossi-Hansberg (2013) to analyze the Spanish city size distribution, which
Abstract: Civil registration of vital statistics was introduced in Ireland in 1864, yet historians have often viewed the resulting data as unreliable due to weak
Abstract: Substantial amounts of British capital flowed to Latin America during the first era of globalisation. Companies financed by this capital were typically headquartered in
Abstract: This article explores the patriotic war bonds of the Second Polish Republic, which were sold both domestically and to the diaspora in the United
Abstract: This paper focuses on an early unique experiment of managed float of State-issued money, implemented in Venice between 1619 and 1666. Building on a
Abstract: In 1794, the British State intervened in the patent system by introducing the Navy proviso, a legal proviso targeted at select patents compelling the
Abstract: Economic history is integral to the study of economics and economies. Besides providing students with a valuable long-run perspective on the modern world, the
Abstract: We examine how the design of the patent system shapes firms’ access to finance. We exploit a UK reform that introduced substantive examination into
Abstract: We identify all 196 Dutch exchange-listed corporations that halted their operations and ceased to exist between 1903 and 1996. We then explain these terminations
Abstract: This paper examines the effects of pre-colonial institutions on economic development in Latin America using historical ethnic homelands as the unit of analysis. We
The CEOs of Britain’s largest companies wield immense power, but we know very little about them. How did they get to the top? Why do
Abstract: We construct estimates of quarterly GDP for Ireland from 1950, linking to official data from 1995 onward, using a novel factor-augmented Chow-Lin interpolation. Compared
Abstract: We study the short- and long-term effects of affirmative action policies in the context of China. During imperial China, official positions were awarded to
and 
by