The Price of Housing in the United States, 1890–2006
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 estate listings. Our findings revise several stylized facts about U.S. housing markets. Real market rents did not fall during the postwar period in most cities and rose nationally by 60% […]
Trade diversion and labor market adjustment: Vietnam and the U.S.-China trade war
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 extent of U.S. tariff hikes on Chinese imports across industries as well as pre-existing industry employment patterns in Vietnam. We find that Vietnamese individuals and districts that are more exposed […]
Macroeconomic costs of gender gaps: the case of Mexico
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 Mexico. Focusing on a single country allows us to obtain detailed information on men’s and women’s labor force participation in domestic production, as well as their productivity in this sector. […]
Histories That Matter: The Case for Applied Economic History
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 argue that economic history contributes to policy not by offering ready-made lessons, but by disciplining the narratives and analogies that policymakers and the public use. Unlike conventional economic history, which […]
The Aftermath of Sovereign Debt Crises: A Narrative Approach
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 potentially endogenous, we use the narrative approach to identify plausibly exogenous episodes. We find economically and statistically significant costs of up to 3.2 percent of GDP before recovering to the […]
Applied Economic History as Practical Historicism: Encouraging Policymakers to Reason with the Past
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 source of policy lessons or predictions. It argues that economic history is particularly well suited to facilitating this role because it combines institutional analysis with disciplined comparison of plausible alternatives […]
On the persistence of persistence: Lessons from long-term trends in African Institutions
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 determined by institutional choices made in the past. However, the lack of consistent annual data on GDP per capita or institutional variables has meant that this literature has been largely […]
Urban Accounting and Welfare in Spain
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 is driven by three city-specific characteristics: productivity, amenities, and frictions. Counterfactual simulations show that removing cross-city variation in these characteristics leads to welfare gains and population shifts in Spain larger […]
The CEO: The Rise and Fall of Britain’s Captains of Industry
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 they have so much power? Are they really worth that exorbitant salary? Michael Aldous and John Turner provide the answers by telling the story of the British CEO over the […]
Quarterly GDP for Ireland Since 1950
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 to the only alternative series (OECD, 2025), our procedure exploits the variation in a large number of official quarterly economic data and our estimates are broadly consistent with contemporary reports. […]
Home-Country Internet and Immigrants’ Well-Being
Abstract: This paper documents the effects of home-country internet expansion on immigrants’ health and subjective well-being (SWB). Combining data from the European Social Survey with data on 3G and overall internet expansion, I find that immigrants’ SWB increases following home-country internet expansion. This result is observed in two-way fixed effects and event study frameworks. The […]
Applying History to Inform Anticipatory AI Governance: Using Foresight and Hindsight to Inform Policymaking
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 the internet. As with such technologies, AI offers the opportunity for tremendous increases in human well-being while also threatening to destabilize social, governance, economic, and critical infrastructure systems and disempower […]
Decoding Trump’s trade strategy: The historical pattern beneath the headlines
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 than in trade policy. Three distinct interpretations have emerged: the Bluff Thesis, the Reckless Driver Theory and the Geopolitical Realignment Strategy. Read more here: Globe and Mail.
Religion and Economic Development: Past, Present, and Future
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 Pakistan and low rates in China. Despite declines in some Western countries, religion remains influential worldwide, with projected growth in Muslim populations due to higher fertility rates. Religion continues to […]
The Evolution of the Irish 12.5 Percent Corporate Tax Rate: An Oral History
Abstract: The sources formally documenting how tax policy evolves fail to capture many of the complexities inherent in such processes. Insights into such approaches would guide other tax administrations in navigating tax policy change in an international domain. This paper examines the historical background to the introduction of the Irish 12.5 percent corporate tax rate […]
Housing Prices, Costs, And Policy: The Housing Supply Equation In Ireland Since 1970
Abstract: This article examines the responsiveness of new housing supply to prices and costs, using the case of Ireland at quarterly frequency from the 1970s, as well as a county-level panel from the 1990s. Across four error-correction specifications, and supported by an instrumental variables approach, we find the estimated elasticity of new housing supply to […]
Rally ’Round the Mask: Congressional Social Media Images and Masking during COVID-19
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 a crisis. But did elites rally? The pandemic occurred at a point of extreme polarization in the United States, which threatens the potential for a rally. In this article, we […]
Long-term exposure to PM2.5 air pollution and mental health: a retrospective cohort study in Ireland
Abstract: Background Mental illness is the leading cause of years lived with disability, and the global disease burden of mental ill-health has increased substantially in the last number of decades. There is now increasing evidence that environmental conditions, and in particular poor air quality, may be associated with mental health and wellbeing. Methods This cross-sectional […]
Financing UK rail infrastructure: how does today compare with the past?
Summary:In Victorian Britain, hundreds of companies and countless private investors supported railway construction; today, such infrastructure is only financed by the government. Comparing delivery of HS2 and the Great Western Railway suggests that the historical funding model was rather more effective. Cite as: Padraig McKee, Chris Colvin, Financing UK rail infrastructure: how does today compare […]
Is gold a safe haven for investors?
Summary: The price of gold has risen in recent years, highlighting the role of this precious metal as a stable investment. While the value of gold is resilient and protected from inflation, its stability is not guaranteed in times of crisis. Cite as: Philip Fliers, Is gold a safe haven for investors? Economics Observatory (2024) […]
Three Centuries of Corporate Governance in the UK
Abstract: As articulated by Adam Smith, one of the central issues facing companies is that managers will not run the business in the interests of its owners and will misuse resources. This ultimately has a detrimental consequence for the wealth of the nation. This survey reviews the nature and evolution of the corporate governance of […]
Transhumant Pastoralism, Climate Change and Conflict in Africa
Abstract: We consider the effects of climate change on seasonally migrant populations that herd livestock—i.e., transhumant pastoralists—in Africa. Traditionally, transhumant pastoralists benefit from a cooperative relationship with sedentary agriculturalists whereby arable land is used for crop farming in the wet season and animal grazing in the dry season. Rainfall scarcity can disrupt this arrangement by […]
What can we learn from historical pandemics? A systematic review of the literature
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 that occurred since the Industrial Revolution and prior to Covid-19. Our literature searches were conducted between June 2020 and September 2023, with the final review encompassing 169 research papers selected […]
Do managers matter? Management practices in post-COVID Northern Ireland
Abstract: Northern Ireland has a persistent productivity gap to the rest of the UK. Northern Ireland, as with the rest of the UK and Europe, also has a long tail of low productivity SMEs and micro businesses. An important contributor to a firm’s productivity is its management. Managers make decisions regarding the allocation of labour […]
Managed decline? Muddling through with the Sterling (dis)agreements, 1968-74
Abstract: How do policy makers manage the decline of an international currency? This paper examines British policy towards the pound sterling’s international role in the years 1968-74. Using previously uncited government archival sources, we revisit the view that the ‘sterling agreements’ of 1968-74, bilateral contracts made between the UK and governments holding sterling, formed a […]
Collective Victimhood Narratives in Far-Right Communities on Telegram
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 narratives stirring these feelings in far-right communications is especially concerning given their inclusion in the manifestos of several mass killers across Europe and North America. However, scholars still have little […]
Should History Change The Way We Think About Populism?
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 which populism is ‘an exclusionary form of identity politics, which is why it poses a threat to democracy’. We make three historical arguments. First, late 19th century US Populists were […]
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