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Transportation and development: insights from the U.S., 1840-1860
We study the effects of large transportation costs on economic development. We argue that the Midwest and the Northeast of the U.S. is a natural case because starting from 1840 decent data is available showing that the two regions shared key characteristics with today?s developing countries and that transportation costs were large and then came way down. To disentangle the effects of the large reduction in transportation costs from those of other changes that happened during 1840?1860, we build a model that speaks to the distribution of people across regions and across the sectors of ...
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What ever happened to the Puerto Rican sugar manufacturing industry?
Beginning in the early 1900s, Puerto Rican sugar has entered the U.S. mainland tariff free. Given this new status, the Puerto Rican sugar industry grew dramatically, soon far outstripping Louisiana?s production. Then, in the middle 1960s, something amazing happened. Production collapsed. Manufacturing sugar in Puerto Rico was no longer profitable. Louisiana, in contrast, continued to produce and grow sugar. We argue that local economic policy was responsible for the industry?s demise. In the 1930s and 1940s, the local Puerto Rican government enacted policies to stifle the growth of large ...
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Economists Should Be Studying Monopoly Much More Extensively: How Our Interest in Monopoly Waned After We Began Thinking About Monopoly All Wrong
Our forebears --- including Adam Smith, Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, William Stanley Jevons, Frank A. Fetter, Lionel Robbins, Jacob Viner, Henry Simons and Thurman Arnold --- understood there were many types of groups or organizations that develop into monopolies, including trade associations, cartels, unions, cooperatives and professional associations. They also emphasized that it's difficult to know the full extent of monopolization, as many monopolies were informally organized, while others, perhaps the majority, were alliances of monopolies, making both types hard to detect. Our forebears ...
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New and larger costs of monopoly and tariffs
Fifty-eight years ago, Harberger (1954) estimated that the costs of monopoly, which resulted from misallocation of resources across industries, were trivial. Others showed the same was true for tariffs. This research soon led to the consensus that monopoly costs are of little significance?a consensus that persists to this day. ; This paper reports on a new literature that takes a different approach to the costs of monopoly. It examines the costs of monopoly and tariffs within industries. In particular, it examines the histories of industries in which a monopoly is destroyed (or tariffs ...
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Breaking down the barriers to technological progress: how U.S. policy can promote higher economic growth
1996 Annual Report essay
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Mass Production of Houses in Factories in the United States: The First and Only “Experiment” Was a Tremendous Success
We show that the first and only experiment of U.S. mass production of houses, in a factory-built home industry that became known as the Mobile Home industry (and today, as the Manufactured Home industry), was a tremendous success. Mobile Home prices-psf fell by two-thirds from 1955 to 1973, as productivity soared; home quality rose significantly, with Mobile Home building codes receiving ANSI certification in 1963 and National Fire Protection Association co-sponsorship in 1965; as production soared, Mobile Homes accounted for one-third of single-family homes produced in the early 1970s. These ...
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The economic performance of cartels: evidence from the New Deal U.S. sugar manufacturing cartel, 1934-74
We study the U.S. sugar manufacturing cartel that was created during the New Deal. This was a legal-cartel that lasted 40 years (1934-74). As a legal-cartel, the industry was assured widespread adherence to domestic and import sales quotas (given it had access to government enforcement powers). But it also meant accepting government-sponsored cartel-provisions. These provisions significantly distorted production at each factory and also where the industry was located. These distortions were reflected in, for example, a declining industry recovery rate, that is, the pounds of white sugar ...
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Resistance to technology and trade between areas
Why are methods of production used in an area when more 'efficient' methods are available? This paper explores a 'resistance to technology' explanation. In particular, the paper attempts to understand why some industries, like the construction industry, have had continued success in blocking new methods, while others have met failure, like the dairy industry's recent attempt to block bST. We develop a model which shows that how easily goods move between areas determines in part the extent of resistance to new methods in an area.
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Does regulation reduce productivity? Evidence from regulation of the U.S. beet-sugar manufacturing industry during the Sugar Acts, 1934-74
We study the impact of regulation on productivity and welfare in the U.S. sugar manufacturing industry. While this U.S. industry has been protected from foreign competition for nearly 150 years, it was regulated only during the Sugar Act period, 1934-74. We show that regulation significantly reduced productivity, with these productivity losses leading to large welfare losses. Our initial results indicate that the welfare losses are many times larger than those typically studied ? those arising from higher prices. We also argue that the channels through which regulation led to large ...
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Monopoly and the incentive to innovate when adoption involves switchover disruptions
When considering the incentive of a monopolist to adopt an innovation, the textbook model assumes that it can instantaneously and seamlessly introduce the new technology. In fact, firms often face major problems in integrating new technologies. In some cases, firms have to (temporarily) produce at levels substantially below capacity upon adoption. We call such phenomena switchover disruptions, and present extensive evidence on them. If firms face switchover disruptions, then they may temporarily lose some unit sales upon adoption. If the firm loses unit sales, then a cost of adoption is the ...