Research

Publications

"The Changing Identities of American Wives and Mothers" (with Jeanne Lafortune and Aloysius Siow), Journal of Economic Literature, forthcoming.

"Fertility and Family Dynamics," in Handbook of Cliometrics, 3rd edition, Claude Diebolt and Michael Haupert (eds.), 2023. [link]

"For Richer, For Poorer: Bankers' Liability and Risk Taking in New England, 1867-1880" (with Peter Koudijs and Gurpal Sran), Journal of Finance 76, no. 3 (2021), pp 1541-1599.  [link] [NBER WP]  Media: VoxEU

"Limited Liability and Investment: Evidence from Changes in Marital Property Laws in the U.S. South, 1840-1850" (with Peter Koudijs), Journal of Financial Economics 138, no. 1 (2020), pp 1-26.  [link] [NBER WP]

"Three-Generation Mobility in the United States, 1840-1940: The Role of Paternal and Maternal Grandparents" (with Claudia Olivetti and Daniele Paserman), Explorations in Economic History 70 (2018), pp 73-90.  [link] [NBER WP]

"Ideology and Migration after the American Civil War" (with Shari Eli and Allison Shertzer), Journal of Economic History 78, no. 3 (2018), pp 822-861. [link] [NBER WP]

"Local Information, Income Dispersion, and Geographic Mobility" (with Timothy Bond), The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy 18, no. 3  (2018), pp 1-17. [link]

"Women's Income and Marriage Markets in the United States: Evidence from the Civil War Pension," Journal of Economic History 77, no. 1 (2017), pp 1-38.  [link] [NBER WP]  Media: WSJ

"Patronage Politics and the Development of the Welfare State: Confederate Pensions in the American South" (with Shari Eli), Journal of Economic History 76, no. 4 (2016), pp 1078-1112.  [link] [NBER WP]

"Selective Migration, Wages, and Occupational Mobility in Nineteenth Century America," Explorations in Economic History 53 (2014), pp 40-63.  [link]

Working Papers

"The Emergence of the Socioeconomic Gradient in Women's Marriage Outcomes" (with Claudia Olivetti, Daniele Paserman, and Anna Weber), 2024. Accepted, Review of Economics and Statistics. (Previously circulated as "Who Married, (to) Whom, and Where? Trends in Marriage in the United States, 1850-1940"  [NBER WP] )          

"The Roots of the Modern American Presidential Campaign" (with Francisco Pino), 2024.

"Union Army Widows and the Historical Take-up of Social Benefits," 2023.

"Marrying for Money: Evidence from the First Wave of Married Women's Property Laws in the U.S." (with Peter Koudijs), 2018.

Works in Progress

"Female Labor Force Participation and Intergenerational Mobility" (with Jorgen Modalsli, Claudia Olivetti, and Daniele Paserman)

"The Intergenerational Persistence of Welfare Receipt" (with Shari Eli)

"Ontario's Housing Crisis in Medium-Run Perspective'' (with Shari Eli)