UMBC Economics Department
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Home Learning Environments for Young Children in the U.S. during COVID-19
(Taylor & Francis, 2021-06-27)Research Findings: During COVID-19 many countries, including the U.S., implemented stayat-home policies that closed most schools and childcare centers. This research focuses on the home learning environment reported by ... -
Historical Happenstance and Local Educational Attainment: Evidence from the Establishment of U.S. Colleges
(2021-06-05)We investigate how establishing a college a ects local educational attainment using historical natural experiments in which runner-up locations were strongly considered to become college sites but ultimately not chosen ... -
150 years of the geography of innovation
(Elsevier, 2021-01-25)Innovation has long been seen as central to long-term regional growth. Due to the absence of comprehensive data on the geography of innovation covering long time periods, quantifying long-term innovation-development linkages ... -
Changes in the demographics of American inventors, 1870–1940
(Elsevier, 2019-06-06)We assemble a novel dataset linking inventors listed in the Annual Reports of the Commissioner of Patents to Population Census records spanning 1870 to 1940. We find that inventors are not a random subset of the population. ... -
The Location of Agricultural Research and the Direction of Agricultural Innovation
(National Bureau of Economic Research, 2019-05-13)I analyze the importance of the local environment on the direction and subsequent diffusion of agricultural innovations. By comparing counties that are near and far from land grant colleges using a variety of distance ... -
How Do Institutions of Higher Education Affect Local Invention? Evidence from the Establishment of U.S. Colleges
(2020-03-28)I use data on site selection decisions for a subset of U.S. colleges to identify "runner-up" locations that were strongly considered to become the sites of new colleges but were ultimately not chosen for as-good-as-random ... -
Dissertation Executive Summary: Fuel of Interest and Fire of Genius: Essays on the Economic History of Innovation
(2017-12-05)In this dissertation, I use historical patent data and natural experiments to show how policies and institutions affect invention. Chapter 1 shows that establishing new colleges causes 33% more patents per year in places ... -
American Inventors, 1870-1940
(openICPSR, 2020-07-06) -
Local Effects of Land Grant Colleges on Agricultural Innovation and Output
(National Bureau of Economic Research, 2019-09)To estimate the local effect of establishing land grant colleges, I compare locations that receive a land grant college to “runner-up” counties that were in contention to receive the land grant but did not for as-good-as-random ... -
Bar Talk: Informal Social Interactions, Alcohol Prohibition, and Invention
(Yale University, 2019-10-28)To understand the importance of informal social networks for invention, I examine one of the largest involuntary disruptions of social networks in U.S. history: alcohol prohibition. The enactment of state-level prohibition ... -
Beyond 140 Characters: Introduction to The Role of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Economic Growth
(National Bureau of Economic Research, 2020-11)This is an introduction to the forthcoming volume "The Role of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Economic Growth." The chapters collected in this volume seek to answer the following questions: What is the relationship ... -
Annual Reports of the Commissioner of Patents Data
(openICPSR, 2020-08-05) -
Historical patent data: A practitioner's guide
(Wiley Online Library, 2021-02-11)I provide a primer on six recent large-scale historical patent data sets for use in innovation research. I discuss how each data set is constructed, the types of patent information included in each, and the quality and ... -
Reassessing the Contributions of African American Inventors to the Golden Age of Innovation
(2020-10-15)During the Industrial Revolution and subsequently, it is widely believed that African Americans contributed disproportionately little to the economic development of the United States, especially in comparison to European ... -
The interrelation between formal and informal institutions through international trade
(Wiley Online Library, 2021-05-01)This paper theoretically examines how country-specific formal and informal institutions are interrelated through international trade within a two-country general-equilibrium framework. When formal and informal institutions ... -
On Balance: When All Lives Matter Equally: Equity Weights for BCA by Combining the Economics of VSL and US Policy
(Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis, 2021-03-16) -
Long-Run Educational Attainment E ects of Local Colleges: Evidence from the Establishment of US Colleges
(2021-02-16)We study the e ects of a college on local education attainment using historical college establishment experiments in which "runner-up" locations were strongly considered to become college sites but ultimately not chosen ... -
Heterogeneous informality in Costa Rica and Nicaragua
(UNU-WIDER, 2021-03)Informal work is often considered a place of employment for marginalized and vulnerable workers who have been rationed out of preferred formal work. However, informality can also be seen as a dynamic sector that budding ... -
Compliance with legal minimum wages Compliance with legal minimum wages and overtime pay regulations in China
(Springer Nature, 2015-10-13)We use a matched firm-employee data set to examine the extent of compliance with minimum wage and overtime pay regulations in Chinese formal sector firms. We find evidence that there is broad compliance with legal minimum ... -
Retrospective Benefit-Cost Analysis of Security-Enhancing and Cost-Saving Technologies
(Cambridge University Press, 2020-12-17)Research and development (R&D) planners in homeland security agencies would like to be able to prioritize investments in projects based on costs versus future safety and security benefits. While costs are often readily ...
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