I am an Assistant Professor at Baylor University. 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.A.Ward (at) gmail.com.
Active Working Papers
1. Intergenerational Mobility in American History: Accounting for Race and Measurement Error, February 2020
revisions requested at The American Economic Review
2. Life after Crossing the Border: Assimilation during the First Mexican Mass Migration, September 2020,
with David Escamilla-Guerrero and Ed Kosack, revisions requested at Explorations in Economic History
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. El sueño americano? The generational progress of Mexican Americans prior to World War II, with Ed Kosack
The Journal of Economic History, forthcoming December 2020
4. 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
5. The low return to English fluency during the Age of Mass Migration,
European Review of Economic History, May 2020
6. The Residential Segregation of Immigrants in the United States from 1850 to 1940 (with Katherine Eriksson)
The Journal of Economic History, December 2019. Data
7. International Migration in the Atlantic Economy 1850-1940 (with Timothy J. Hatton)
Handbook of Cliometrics, 2018
8. Age at Arrival and Assimilation during the Age of Mass Migration (with Rohan Alexander)
The Journal of Economic History, September 2018. Data
9. Birds of Passage: Return Migration, Self-Selection and Immigration Quotas
Explorations in Economic History, April 2017
10. 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
11. 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
12. 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]
