Disclaimer: Research is hard. I am posting these abstracts, each of which has an associated draft. Please know that they are incomplete and flawed. However, I believe they represent contributions to knowledge that deserve public viewing. One of the challenges of being a PhD student, for me, was feeling that my work was not visible to anyone, not contributing to anything, and like it would never be as good as I wanted it to be. I feel it's important to share imperfect work both because working in a vacuum is a bummer and because the best way to advance knowledge is to make work visible so that people can keep improving upon it.
This paper evaluates the early stages of economic change due to tractor adoption. The paper uses complete count census data at both the county and individual level to study the impact of farm mechanization in the first half of the twentieth century. I find that tractor adoption marginally reduces the levels of farm residency and agricultural employment between 1910 and 1940. I then examine the individual-level outcomes and adjustment mechanisms for impacted individuals. I find that the generation of farm workers that was older when the tractor was adopted see large disemployment effects and an exodus from the labor market, though no strong migratory effects. Youth who grew up on farms, however, are likely to stay in farm work and do not show strong propensity to migrate out of their county of origin. I make sense of these findings with a spatial equilibrium model that nests the task-based production model developed to understand automation dynamics.
This paper studies home production in macroeconomic models using micro data from the American Time Use Survey. I begin by building a simple RBC-style model with home production and two income earners. I solve and simulate the model to demonstrate how shocks to productivity may impact time allocation between two spouses in the home. I then use the American Time Use Survey to study time allocation in response to the Great Recession. I use state-level variation in the unemployment rate over the Great Recession to measure how men and women's time spent on market work, home production, childcare and leisure varied with labor market conditions. I find that contrary to the predictions of the neo-classical model, men's and women's time in home production do not co-move. This finding proves the need for better modeling of household time allocation and substitution in macroeconomic modeling.Â
In this paper, I ask whether the slave trade contributed significantly to growth in Western European cities, and if so, how large can we reasonably say this contribution was. Using data on Trans-Atlantic voyages carrying enslaved people as cargo, I estimate the causal effect of investing in the exploitation and trade of enslaved people on the growth of European cities. I find a statistically and economically significant link between involvement in the Atlantic slave trade and population growth in European cities.