Gold and silver rushes increased the level of mining activity and settlement in the American West during the nineteenth century. This paper aims to identify the short- and long-run impacts of this activity on population growth and density. We find that, in response to gold and silver site discoveries, areas nearby grew more in population than areas farther away. Many of these newly formed towns eventually died, however, as the mining industry declined. These ghost towns were initially smaller, more isolated from markets, and more dependent on mining than their surviving counterparts. We find that, even though the mining industry had declined considerably by the early twentieth century, today’s western population is still more populous and dense around historical mining sites compared to other areas. Early mining activity thus encouraged growth, decline, and path dependence in the urban system of the western US.

This paper studies the drivers of global shipping dynamics and their aggregate implications. We document novel evidence on the dynamics of global shipping supply, demand, and costs. Motivated by this evidence, we set up a dynamic model of international trade with a global shipping market where shipping firms and importers endogenously determine shipping supply and costs. We find the model successfully accounts for the dynamics of global shipping observed in the aftermath of COVID-19 as well as at business cycle frequencies. We find that accounting for global shipping is critical for the dynamics of aggregate economic activity.

Traces the imposition of modernity through the global extraction of raw copper, the production of copper products, and the implications of electricity and telegraphs, in both the United States and Japan.

This paper applies a quantitative spatial analysis for the long-term impact of Western gold rushes, studying the effect of 19th century US mineral districts on modern (2010) population density. OLS regression estimates show positive effects for areas adjacent to historic mining districts. Census tracts within 15 miles of a mineral district but not containing one are 29.8% more dense than other tracts in the West. Additionally, capital-intensive/large-scale mining was more persistent than labor-intensive/small-scale methods, and path dependence is achieved mainly through agglomeration. This research corroborates historical arguments focusing on the development of Western infrastructure for long term growth, and also contributes to the growing economic literature on path dependence.

Explores the nonlinear imposition of capitalist ideologies in Western systems, using the Pike’s Peak Gold Rush and development in Colorado from 1858-1876 as a case study.

In the development growth accounting of cross-country income variation, the human capital stock index has become an increasingly important explanatory factor. At the same time, its value is very sensitive to measurement decisions, making accurate proxies for human capital essential for reliable accounting. The existing literature has progressed to quantify human capital through stratifying by level of educational attainment and weighting each level by its marginal productivity. As explored in the microeconomic literature, however, increased college participation in the past 30 years has made ‘‘field of study’’ increasingly important in the determination of life outcomes and earnings. Drawing on a recently published data set containing college graduates by field of study in 45 countries, I am able to differentiate college educational attainment horizontally, that is by field of study. My newly developed human capital stock index increases the explanatory power of observables in cross-country income variation relative to the previous index by 48 percent, with more conservative but consistently positive increases in alternative accounting measures. This study helps to recognize the importance of horizontal differentiation in education and calls for more macroeconomic research in the topic.