I am an Assistant Professor at Baylor University. I am also a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. My research interests are in labor economics and economic history. Research in this area has been reinvigorated with the mass digitization of historical census files by the fine folks at IPUMS.
You can contact me at: Zach[dot]A[dot]Ward@gmail[dot]com.
Working Papers/Works in Progress
1. Intergenerational Mobility in American History: Accounting for Race and Measurement Error, September 2021 [updated]
revisions resubmitted to The American Economic Review , [online appendix]
Media: The Weeds (~min 44), Marginal Revolution, Hutchins Roundup (Brookings)
2. Family Trees and Falling Applies: Intergenerational Mobility Estimates from US Genealogy Data, with Kasey Buckles and Joseph Price
3. Like Grandfather, Like Grandson: Multigenerational Mobility in American History, with Kasey Buckles and Joseph Price
4. Taking America to Task: Market Specialization in the Long Run, with Rowena Gray, Siobhan O'Keefe, and Sarah Quincy
5. The impact of the Mexican Revolution on Mexico-US Migration, with David Escamilla-Guerrero and Ed Kosack
Publications
1. Internal Migration, Education and Intergenerational Mobility: Evidence from American History,
The Journal of Human Resources, forthcoming
2. Immigrants and Cities during the Age of Mass Migration, with Katherine Eriksson
Regional Science and Urban Economics (Special Issue: Urban Economics and History), forthcoming
3. Life after Crossing the Border: Assimilation during the First Mexican Mass Migration,
with David Escamilla-Guerrero and Ed Kosack, Explorations in Economic History, October 2021
4. El sueño americano? The generational progress of Mexican Americans prior to World War II, with Ed Kosack
The Journal of Economic History, December 2020
5. The Not-So-Hot Melting Pot: The Persistence of Outcomes for Descendants of the Age of Mass Migration,
American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2020
Media: AEA Research Highlight
6. The low return to English fluency during the Age of Mass Migration,
European Review of Economic History, May 2020
7. The Residential Segregation of Immigrants in the United States from 1850 to 1940 (with Katherine Eriksson)
The Journal of Economic History, December 2019. Data
Media: VoxEU
8. International Migration in the Atlantic Economy 1850-1940 (with Timothy J. Hatton)
Handbook of Cliometrics, 2018
9. Age at Arrival and Assimilation during the Age of Mass Migration (with Rohan Alexander)
The Journal of Economic History, September 2018. Data
10. Birds of Passage: Return Migration, Self-Selection and Immigration Quotas
Explorations in Economic History, April 2017
11. Immigration Quotas, World War I, and Emigrant Flows from the US in the Early 20th Century (with Michael J. Greenwood)
Explorations in Economic History, January 2015
12. Who Crossed the Border? Self-Selection of Mexican Migrants in the Early 20th Century (with Edward Kosack)
The Journal of Economic History, December 2014
Other Publications
13. The Circular Flow: Return Migration from the United States in the Early 1900s
The Journal of Economic History, June 2016 [dissertation summary]
Not-as-active Working Papers
1. There and Back (and Back) Again: Repeat Migration to the United States, 1897-1936, March 2016 [email for draft]
