Research and Work in Progress
Did the Rise of the South Deindustrialize the North? (with Gordon Hanson)
(slides)
During the middle of the 20th century, U.S. manufacturing reorganized itself. A substantial share of industrial jobs were reallocated from the U.S. North to the U.S. South, presaging the exodus of manufacturing from the global North to the global South that would occur several decades hence. We study how the rise of the South affected labor market outcomes in the North. First, we account for the factors behind the timing of the South's industrialization, including the region's delayed transition out of agriculture, the Great Migration, the construction of interstate highways, the rise of unionism, and shifting patterns of industry innovation. Second, we estimate the causal impact of Southern manufacturing job growth on Northern local labor markets. Northern regions more exposed to the rise of the South saw larger declines in manufacturing employment, no offsetting gains in service employment, no differential change in population headcounts, and lower earnings among low-wage workers. These impacts were substantial larger for Black workers than for white workers. Third, we examine the social consequences of the Northern shift out of manufacturing. Regions exposed to the rise of the South saw larger decreases in marriage rates, and larger increases in the fraction of children living with single mothers, where these impacts were most pronounced among Black households. In ongoing work, we are studying impacts on Northern housing markets, educational attainment, takeup of public income assistance, and social mobility.
Did Rapid Transit Displace Urban Manufacturing?
Can rapid transit change the composition of production within a city? Leveraging the rollout of rapid transit in manufacturing-heavy Philadelphia, I study the effect of subways on industry location using digitized industrial directories, city directories, and full-count census data for Philadelphia between 1850 and 1950.
Automation Technologies and Employment at Risk
with Alfonso Cebreros, Aldo Heffner-Rodríguez, and Daniela Puggioni
Bank of Mexico Working Paper 2020-04
We use estimates for the probability of automation of occupations in Frey and Osborne (2017) together with household survey data on the occupational distribution of employment to provide a risk assessment for the threat that automation may pose to the Mexican labor market. We find that almost two thirds of total employment is at high risk of automation; slightly more than half if we only consider employment in the formal sector. We argue that, while these estimates provide a useful benchmark to start thinking about the impact that automation may have on the labor market, they should be interpreted with care as they are solely based on the technical feasibility to automate and do not reflect the economic incentives, or other factors such as the accumulation of human capital through education, to adopt automation technologies.