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: 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 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
Summary: Artificial intelligence (AI) heralds societal changes that could rival those associated with past transformational general-purpose technologies, such as metallurgy, the steam engine, electricity, and
U.S. President Donald Trump loves throwing opponents off balance. This unpredictability makes foretelling his administration’s policy priorities all the harder. Nowhere is this more evident
Abstract: This chapter examines the role of religion in economic development, both historically and today. Religion’s influence varies globally, with high religiosity in countries like
Abstract: Lasting changes in women’s employment followed the 1918 influenza pandemic in the United States. In the decades before the pandemic, consistently fewer women reported
Abstract: This paper uses a new dataset on the universe of Canadian imports and tariffs between 1924 and 1936, disaggregated into 1697 goods originating in
Abstract: During national crises, political elites often rally around the flag, promoting a central message to restore unity and calm the public. COVID-19 provided such
Abstract: This paper examines the responses of Indigenous nations and European companies to new trading opportunities: the Cree nations with the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC)
Abstract: Industrial policies, such as infrastructure investments and export tariffs, affect the allocation of labor and incomes across sectors, attracting substantial lobbying efforts by special
Abstract: How did countries recover from the Great Depression? In this paper, we explore the argument that leaving the gold standard helped by boosting inflationary
Abstract: What are the insights from historical pandemics for policymaking today? We carry out a systematic review of the literature on the impact of pandemics
Abstract: This paper examines the long-term economic impacts of the adoption of local knowledge during European colonisation. We use the case of Australia, where Aboriginal
Abstract: Feelings of collective victimhood have been demonstrated to have a strong effect on ingroup bias, outgroup hostility and support for violence. The use of
Abstract: This paper asks whether history should change the way in which economists and economic historians think about populism. We use Müller’s definition, according to
Abstract: We introduce a new database of historical Genuine Savings (GS), an indicator of sustainable development promoted by the World Bank and widely used in
Summary: Nationalists think about the economy, Marvin Suesse argues, and this thinking matters once nationalists hold political power. Many nationalists seek to limit global exchange,
Abstract: Fears of immigrants as a threat to public health have a long and sordid history. At the turn of the 20th century, when immigrants
Abstract: Building wealth over lifetimes became possible for a broader span of the population in developed countries over the 20th century compared to any time
Abstract: The economic history of the United States is that of Europeans and their institutions. Indigenous nations are absent. This absence is partly due to
Abstract: Social scientists have long been interested in how intergroup contact or elite messaging can reduce or eliminate racial biases. To better understand the role
Abstract: This paper argues that the underprovision of public goods can be partly explained by lower demand from Indigenous groups with high preferences for Indigenous
Abstract: New hand-collected school administrative data from 1870s Virginia, alongside linked individual US Census records, reveals that temporary school closures had lasting effects on literacy
Abstract: We study agency frictions in the United States Congress. We examine the longstanding hypothesis that political elites engage in conflict because they fail to
Abstract: In the 1920s, the United States substantially reduced immigration by imposing country-specific entry quotas. We compare local labor markets differentially exposed to the quotas
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