Rowena Gray - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Rowena Gray

Social Science Research Network, 2020

Gray and Morin gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Russell Sage Foundation (grant... more Gray and Morin gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Russell Sage Foundation (grant 85-15-12). The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

Working paper, Jun 1, 2024

We construct the first consistent market rent and home sales price series for American cities acr... more We construct the first consistent market rent and home sales price series for American cities across the 20th century using millions of newspaper real estate listings. Our findings revise several stylized facts about U.S. housing markets. Real market rents did not fall during the 20th century for most cities. Instead, real rental price levels increased by about 20% from 1890 to 2006. There was also greater growth in real housing sales prices from 1965 to 1995 than is commonly understood. Using these series we document several new facts about housing markets. The return to homeownership has varied considerably across cities and over time, but rental returns were historically much more important than capital gains in every city. We discuss the implications of our indices for the business cycle and the consumer price index. Finally, we provide evidence that housing prices increased unevenly across cities over time in response to natural building and regulatory constraints.

Gray and Morin gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Russell Sage Foundation (grant... more Gray and Morin gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Russell Sage Foundation (grant 85-15-12). The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

Labour Economics, 2021

Gray and Morin gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Russell Sage Foundation (grant... more Gray and Morin gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Russell Sage Foundation (grant 85-15-12). The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

tcd.ie

The first question that arises immediately from the title of this project is: what is industriali... more The first question that arises immediately from the title of this project is: what is industrialisation and when did it occur in Britain? This is a much-debated issue in economic history but I take it to mean the gradual and often incomplete manner in which machinery and technical innovation was introduced into production in all areas of the economy. 1 I will deal primarily with the 19th century period (1780 to 1914), though admittedly it could be argued that the” Industrial Revolution 'began some time before this, at least in some ...

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Economics and Finance, Mar 22, 2023

AEA papers and proceedings, May 1, 2022

The 1920s in the United States were a time of high income and wealth growth and rising inequality... more The 1920s in the United States were a time of high income and wealth growth and rising inequality, up to the peak in 1929. It was an era of technological innovations such as electrification as well as booms in consumer durables, housing, and asset markets. The degree to which these skill-biased opportunities shaped property wealth inequality depends on how local and macro-level industrial shocks were capitalized into real estate values. We uncover the pattern for California, a state where shocks in oil, housing and stocks were large, and which has annual data on city-level property values and population counts. We show that electricity both increased values and reduced inequality in property values, while other booms had more short-lived and localized effects.

We provide a long-term analysis of the evolution of occupational task content using digitized dat... more We provide a long-term analysis of the evolution of occupational task content using digitized data based on the 1939, 1949 and 1977 Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Beginning in the early 20th century reveals that the evolution towards modern work was not monotonic over time nor with respect to race or gender. The shift away from physical and routine tasks and towards cognitive and analytical skill began well before the advent of computers. Black-white gaps varied by task but mostly were large and widening before converging dramatically after 1960. Linked historical censuses suggest that there was substantial mobility in task content both throughout the life cycle and across generations early in the 20th century. These task transitions were racially biased, which suggests that technologically driven task displacement had different impacts by race in the early 20th century. JEL: N31, N32, J24, J62

Research Papers in Economics, 2020

There is a dearth of systematic information about the historical New York City housing market. We... more There is a dearth of systematic information about the historical New York City housing market. We present a new sample containing rental price and characteristic data for almost 10,000 Manhattan units which was collected from historical newspapers for the period 1880 to 1910. These units were geolocated to the historical map of Manhattan Island to explore their geographic coverage, using Geographic Information System (GIS) software. We use this new sample to plot the evolution of the location and quality of available Manhattan housing units. This complements existing research on the growth of New York City and the evolution of the ethnic composition of neighborhoods across Census years, as we show information at annual frequency during this time of high growth for the city.

Research Papers in Economics, 2020

Historical inequality is difficult to measure, especially at the sub-country level and beyond the... more Historical inequality is difficult to measure, especially at the sub-country level and beyond the top income shares. This paper presents new evidence on the level of inequality in Manhattan from 1880 to 1910 using housing rents. Rental prices and characteristics, including geocodable locations, were collected from newspapers and provide extensive geographic coverage of the island, relevant for the overwhelming majority of its population where renting predominated. This provides a measure of consumption inequality at the household level which helps to develop the picture of urban inequality for this period, when income and wealth measures are scarce. For large American cities, but particularly for New York, housing made up a large share of consumption expenditure and its consumption cannot be substituted, so this is a reliable and feasible way to identify the true trends in urban inequality across space and time.

An Economist’s Guide to Economic History, 2018

Crime is a relatively recent concept, a construction of an era that focuses more on the legality ... more Crime is a relatively recent concept, a construction of an era that focuses more on the legality of a person’s actions than their morality. This chapter illustrates how economic history can help gain a new perspective on crime, and how crime and violence can be studied by looking at historical policy experiments and their consequences.

Is there any return to education in criminal activities? This is the first paper that investigate... more Is there any return to education in criminal activities? This is the first paper that investigates whether education has not only a positive impact on legitimate, but also on illegitimate activities. We use as a case study one of the longest running criminal corporations in history: the Italian-American mafia. Its most successful members have been capable businessmen, orchestrating crimes that require abilities that might be learned at school: extracting the optimal rent when setting up a racket, weighting interests against default risk when starting a loan sharking business or organising supply chains, logistics and distribution when setting up a drug dealing system. We address this question by comparing mobsters with their closest (non-mobster) neighbors using United States Census data in 1940. We document that mobsters have one year less education than their neighbors on average. None of the specifications presented identified any significant difference in the returns to educatio...

New data on arrest rates by type of crime for 15-20 of the United States’ largest cities has been... more New data on arrest rates by type of crime for 15-20 of the United States’ largest cities has been collected from archival police sources and covers the period 1880 to 1930. This adds new information to the pre-FBI statistical dark age of American crime. This information will be used to analyse the effect of immigration on urban crime during this period of liberal immigration policy and substantial immigrant flows. The channels through which immigration might have an effect include: cultural differences in propensities to commit crimes; a potential increase in easy targets for crime that immigration might induce; an indirect increase due to natives being pushed out of the legal labour market and into illegal activities and a “social disorganization” effect whereby greater turnover in urban housing might loosen the moral deterrent to commit crime for immigrants and natives alike. For the subset of cities and years where arrest information is available separately by nativity, these cha...

We estimate the shortand long-run local labor market impacts of the large increase in U.S. import... more We estimate the shortand long-run local labor market impacts of the large increase in U.S. imports and exports that occurred during the 1970s. We exploit the sequential opening of overseas shipping container ports over the period to identify the effects, and interpret the local average treatment effect as reflecting the relative impact of containerization on local standards of living, which we find to be positive in both the short and long run. We show that the positive impact of the export shock on employment, income, and home and rental prices is large, but short-lived, suggesting that U.S. local labor markets equilibrated quickly. The negative import effects are also large and mostly short-lived, but we find strong persistence in the impact on home and rental prices. We show that this is due to the fact that the housing stock is durable and so does not easily contract. This leads to asymmetric adjustment costs for the housing stock that have important welfare implications.

Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History, 2020

There is a dearth of systematic information about the historical New York City housing market. We... more There is a dearth of systematic information about the historical New York City housing market. We present a new sample containing rental price and characteristic data for almost 10,000 Manhattan units which was collected from historical newspapers for the period 1880 to 1910. These units were geolocated to the historical map of Manhattan Island to explore their geographic coverage, using Geographic Information System (GIS) software. We use this new sample to plot the evolution of the location and quality of available Manhattan housing units. This complements existing research on the growth of New York City and the evolution of the ethnic composition of neighborhoods across Census years, as we show information at annual frequency during this time of high growth for the city.

Social Science History, 2020

Historical inequality is difficult to measure, especially at the subcountry level and beyond the ... more Historical inequality is difficult to measure, especially at the subcountry level and beyond the top income shares. This article presents new evidence on the level of inequality in Manhattan from 1880 to 1910 using housing rents. Rental prices and characteristics, including geocodable locations, were collected from newspapers and provide extensive geographic coverage of the island, relevant for the overwhelming majority of its population where renting predominated. This provides a measure of consumption inequality at the household level, which helps to develop the picture of urban inequality for this period, when income and wealth measures are scarce. For large American cities, but particularly for New York, housing made up a large share of consumption expenditure and its consumption cannot be substituted, so this is a reliable and feasible way to identify the true trends in urban inequality across space and time.

Journal of International Economics, 2020

The extent to which firms respond to labor supply shocks has important implications for local and... more The extent to which firms respond to labor supply shocks has important implications for local and national economies. We exploit firm-level panel data on product and process innovation activities in the United Kingdom and find that the large, low-skill labor supply (immigration) shock generated by the 2004 expansion of the European Union to Eastern European countries increased process innovation and reduced product innovation. This implies that the innovation response to labor supply shocks may be more nuanced than previous literature has suggested. Both of these effects are increasing in the low-skill intensity of firm production as well as firm size. In addition, the reduction in product innovation is lessened for firms whose output is sold locally. We interpret this last finding as evidence in favor of a demand side effect that mitigates the overall decline in product innovation generated by the labor supply shock. We present a model that illustrates the channels through which firms may respond to labor supply shocks, and find that our results are mostly consistent with the model's predictions.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2019

Electricity is a general purpose technology and the catalyst for the second industrial revolution... more Electricity is a general purpose technology and the catalyst for the second industrial revolution. Developing countries are currently making huge investments in electrification, with a view to achieving structural change. What does history say about its impact on the structure of employment? We use U.S. Census data from 1910 to 1940 and measure electrification with the length of higher-voltage electricity lines. Instrumenting for electrification using hydroelectric potential, we find that the average expansion of high-voltage transmission lines between 1910 and 1940 increased the share of operatives in a county by 3.3 percentage points and decreased the share of farmers by 2.1 percentage points. Electrification can explain 50.5% of the total increase in operatives, and 18.1% of the total decrease in farmers between 1910 and 1940. At the industry level, electrification drove 15.7% of the decline in the share of agricultural employment and 28.4% of the increase in the share of manufacturing employment between 1910 and 1940. Electrification was thus a key driver of structural transformation in the U.S. economy.

Explorations in Economic History, 2019

Despite the significant attention paid to the current consequences of globalization for migration... more Despite the significant attention paid to the current consequences of globalization for migration behavior, there are few historical accounts of the effect of commodity market integration at the local level. We set our paper within the context of the first globalization era, when migration flows were largely unregulated, and highlight how exogenous shocks in agricultural commodity prices influenced international migration flows from Italian provinces between 1881 and 1912. To do this, we construct an index of global price exposure based on the initial provincial agricultural production structures. Our analysis quantifies the contribution of globalizationinduced agricultural-price shocks to migration decisions, alongside more traditional explanatory factors such as migrant networks and landholding systems. We find evidence that agriculturalprice shocks are positively related to the propensity to migrate, as migration tended to increase in proportion with agricultural commodity prices. This result suggests that liquidity constraints were binding until agricultural incomes reached a certain threshold. These findings can inform our understanding of present-day migration responses in developing countries in the face of even more rapid globalization but higher barriers to legal migration.

Social Science Research Network, 2020

Gray and Morin gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Russell Sage Foundation (grant... more Gray and Morin gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Russell Sage Foundation (grant 85-15-12). The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

Working paper, Jun 1, 2024

We construct the first consistent market rent and home sales price series for American cities acr... more We construct the first consistent market rent and home sales price series for American cities across the 20th century using millions of newspaper real estate listings. Our findings revise several stylized facts about U.S. housing markets. Real market rents did not fall during the 20th century for most cities. Instead, real rental price levels increased by about 20% from 1890 to 2006. There was also greater growth in real housing sales prices from 1965 to 1995 than is commonly understood. Using these series we document several new facts about housing markets. The return to homeownership has varied considerably across cities and over time, but rental returns were historically much more important than capital gains in every city. We discuss the implications of our indices for the business cycle and the consumer price index. Finally, we provide evidence that housing prices increased unevenly across cities over time in response to natural building and regulatory constraints.

Gray and Morin gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Russell Sage Foundation (grant... more Gray and Morin gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Russell Sage Foundation (grant 85-15-12). The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

Labour Economics, 2021

Gray and Morin gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Russell Sage Foundation (grant... more Gray and Morin gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Russell Sage Foundation (grant 85-15-12). The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

tcd.ie

The first question that arises immediately from the title of this project is: what is industriali... more The first question that arises immediately from the title of this project is: what is industrialisation and when did it occur in Britain? This is a much-debated issue in economic history but I take it to mean the gradual and often incomplete manner in which machinery and technical innovation was introduced into production in all areas of the economy. 1 I will deal primarily with the 19th century period (1780 to 1914), though admittedly it could be argued that the” Industrial Revolution 'began some time before this, at least in some ...

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Economics and Finance, Mar 22, 2023

AEA papers and proceedings, May 1, 2022

The 1920s in the United States were a time of high income and wealth growth and rising inequality... more The 1920s in the United States were a time of high income and wealth growth and rising inequality, up to the peak in 1929. It was an era of technological innovations such as electrification as well as booms in consumer durables, housing, and asset markets. The degree to which these skill-biased opportunities shaped property wealth inequality depends on how local and macro-level industrial shocks were capitalized into real estate values. We uncover the pattern for California, a state where shocks in oil, housing and stocks were large, and which has annual data on city-level property values and population counts. We show that electricity both increased values and reduced inequality in property values, while other booms had more short-lived and localized effects.

We provide a long-term analysis of the evolution of occupational task content using digitized dat... more We provide a long-term analysis of the evolution of occupational task content using digitized data based on the 1939, 1949 and 1977 Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Beginning in the early 20th century reveals that the evolution towards modern work was not monotonic over time nor with respect to race or gender. The shift away from physical and routine tasks and towards cognitive and analytical skill began well before the advent of computers. Black-white gaps varied by task but mostly were large and widening before converging dramatically after 1960. Linked historical censuses suggest that there was substantial mobility in task content both throughout the life cycle and across generations early in the 20th century. These task transitions were racially biased, which suggests that technologically driven task displacement had different impacts by race in the early 20th century. JEL: N31, N32, J24, J62

Research Papers in Economics, 2020

There is a dearth of systematic information about the historical New York City housing market. We... more There is a dearth of systematic information about the historical New York City housing market. We present a new sample containing rental price and characteristic data for almost 10,000 Manhattan units which was collected from historical newspapers for the period 1880 to 1910. These units were geolocated to the historical map of Manhattan Island to explore their geographic coverage, using Geographic Information System (GIS) software. We use this new sample to plot the evolution of the location and quality of available Manhattan housing units. This complements existing research on the growth of New York City and the evolution of the ethnic composition of neighborhoods across Census years, as we show information at annual frequency during this time of high growth for the city.

Research Papers in Economics, 2020

Historical inequality is difficult to measure, especially at the sub-country level and beyond the... more Historical inequality is difficult to measure, especially at the sub-country level and beyond the top income shares. This paper presents new evidence on the level of inequality in Manhattan from 1880 to 1910 using housing rents. Rental prices and characteristics, including geocodable locations, were collected from newspapers and provide extensive geographic coverage of the island, relevant for the overwhelming majority of its population where renting predominated. This provides a measure of consumption inequality at the household level which helps to develop the picture of urban inequality for this period, when income and wealth measures are scarce. For large American cities, but particularly for New York, housing made up a large share of consumption expenditure and its consumption cannot be substituted, so this is a reliable and feasible way to identify the true trends in urban inequality across space and time.

An Economist’s Guide to Economic History, 2018

Crime is a relatively recent concept, a construction of an era that focuses more on the legality ... more Crime is a relatively recent concept, a construction of an era that focuses more on the legality of a person’s actions than their morality. This chapter illustrates how economic history can help gain a new perspective on crime, and how crime and violence can be studied by looking at historical policy experiments and their consequences.

Is there any return to education in criminal activities? This is the first paper that investigate... more Is there any return to education in criminal activities? This is the first paper that investigates whether education has not only a positive impact on legitimate, but also on illegitimate activities. We use as a case study one of the longest running criminal corporations in history: the Italian-American mafia. Its most successful members have been capable businessmen, orchestrating crimes that require abilities that might be learned at school: extracting the optimal rent when setting up a racket, weighting interests against default risk when starting a loan sharking business or organising supply chains, logistics and distribution when setting up a drug dealing system. We address this question by comparing mobsters with their closest (non-mobster) neighbors using United States Census data in 1940. We document that mobsters have one year less education than their neighbors on average. None of the specifications presented identified any significant difference in the returns to educatio...

New data on arrest rates by type of crime for 15-20 of the United States’ largest cities has been... more New data on arrest rates by type of crime for 15-20 of the United States’ largest cities has been collected from archival police sources and covers the period 1880 to 1930. This adds new information to the pre-FBI statistical dark age of American crime. This information will be used to analyse the effect of immigration on urban crime during this period of liberal immigration policy and substantial immigrant flows. The channels through which immigration might have an effect include: cultural differences in propensities to commit crimes; a potential increase in easy targets for crime that immigration might induce; an indirect increase due to natives being pushed out of the legal labour market and into illegal activities and a “social disorganization” effect whereby greater turnover in urban housing might loosen the moral deterrent to commit crime for immigrants and natives alike. For the subset of cities and years where arrest information is available separately by nativity, these cha...

We estimate the shortand long-run local labor market impacts of the large increase in U.S. import... more We estimate the shortand long-run local labor market impacts of the large increase in U.S. imports and exports that occurred during the 1970s. We exploit the sequential opening of overseas shipping container ports over the period to identify the effects, and interpret the local average treatment effect as reflecting the relative impact of containerization on local standards of living, which we find to be positive in both the short and long run. We show that the positive impact of the export shock on employment, income, and home and rental prices is large, but short-lived, suggesting that U.S. local labor markets equilibrated quickly. The negative import effects are also large and mostly short-lived, but we find strong persistence in the impact on home and rental prices. We show that this is due to the fact that the housing stock is durable and so does not easily contract. This leads to asymmetric adjustment costs for the housing stock that have important welfare implications.

Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History, 2020

There is a dearth of systematic information about the historical New York City housing market. We... more There is a dearth of systematic information about the historical New York City housing market. We present a new sample containing rental price and characteristic data for almost 10,000 Manhattan units which was collected from historical newspapers for the period 1880 to 1910. These units were geolocated to the historical map of Manhattan Island to explore their geographic coverage, using Geographic Information System (GIS) software. We use this new sample to plot the evolution of the location and quality of available Manhattan housing units. This complements existing research on the growth of New York City and the evolution of the ethnic composition of neighborhoods across Census years, as we show information at annual frequency during this time of high growth for the city.

Social Science History, 2020

Historical inequality is difficult to measure, especially at the subcountry level and beyond the ... more Historical inequality is difficult to measure, especially at the subcountry level and beyond the top income shares. This article presents new evidence on the level of inequality in Manhattan from 1880 to 1910 using housing rents. Rental prices and characteristics, including geocodable locations, were collected from newspapers and provide extensive geographic coverage of the island, relevant for the overwhelming majority of its population where renting predominated. This provides a measure of consumption inequality at the household level, which helps to develop the picture of urban inequality for this period, when income and wealth measures are scarce. For large American cities, but particularly for New York, housing made up a large share of consumption expenditure and its consumption cannot be substituted, so this is a reliable and feasible way to identify the true trends in urban inequality across space and time.

Journal of International Economics, 2020

The extent to which firms respond to labor supply shocks has important implications for local and... more The extent to which firms respond to labor supply shocks has important implications for local and national economies. We exploit firm-level panel data on product and process innovation activities in the United Kingdom and find that the large, low-skill labor supply (immigration) shock generated by the 2004 expansion of the European Union to Eastern European countries increased process innovation and reduced product innovation. This implies that the innovation response to labor supply shocks may be more nuanced than previous literature has suggested. Both of these effects are increasing in the low-skill intensity of firm production as well as firm size. In addition, the reduction in product innovation is lessened for firms whose output is sold locally. We interpret this last finding as evidence in favor of a demand side effect that mitigates the overall decline in product innovation generated by the labor supply shock. We present a model that illustrates the channels through which firms may respond to labor supply shocks, and find that our results are mostly consistent with the model's predictions.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2019

Electricity is a general purpose technology and the catalyst for the second industrial revolution... more Electricity is a general purpose technology and the catalyst for the second industrial revolution. Developing countries are currently making huge investments in electrification, with a view to achieving structural change. What does history say about its impact on the structure of employment? We use U.S. Census data from 1910 to 1940 and measure electrification with the length of higher-voltage electricity lines. Instrumenting for electrification using hydroelectric potential, we find that the average expansion of high-voltage transmission lines between 1910 and 1940 increased the share of operatives in a county by 3.3 percentage points and decreased the share of farmers by 2.1 percentage points. Electrification can explain 50.5% of the total increase in operatives, and 18.1% of the total decrease in farmers between 1910 and 1940. At the industry level, electrification drove 15.7% of the decline in the share of agricultural employment and 28.4% of the increase in the share of manufacturing employment between 1910 and 1940. Electrification was thus a key driver of structural transformation in the U.S. economy.

Explorations in Economic History, 2019

Despite the significant attention paid to the current consequences of globalization for migration... more Despite the significant attention paid to the current consequences of globalization for migration behavior, there are few historical accounts of the effect of commodity market integration at the local level. We set our paper within the context of the first globalization era, when migration flows were largely unregulated, and highlight how exogenous shocks in agricultural commodity prices influenced international migration flows from Italian provinces between 1881 and 1912. To do this, we construct an index of global price exposure based on the initial provincial agricultural production structures. Our analysis quantifies the contribution of globalizationinduced agricultural-price shocks to migration decisions, alongside more traditional explanatory factors such as migrant networks and landholding systems. We find evidence that agriculturalprice shocks are positively related to the propensity to migrate, as migration tended to increase in proportion with agricultural commodity prices. This result suggests that liquidity constraints were binding until agricultural incomes reached a certain threshold. These findings can inform our understanding of present-day migration responses in developing countries in the face of even more rapid globalization but higher barriers to legal migration.