Capital deepening and the rise of the factory: the American experience during the nineteenth century1

Between 1850 and 1880, capital per worker in United States manufacturing increased on average by at least 75 per cent, even after taking account of declining capital goods prices. During this same period, production shifted from small, labour‐intensive artisan shops to large capital‐intensive factories. Similar changes have occurred in many other countries at the same stage of industrialization. Establishment‐level data from the federal censuses of manufacturing, however, reveal that the shift in production in the United States accounts for a modest amount of the increased capital per worker. There, at least, capital deepening seems to have occurred in almost all firms everywhere.     

The Dynamic Relationship between Permanent and Transitory Components of U.S. Business Cycles

This paper investigates the dynamic relationship between permanent and transitory components of post-war U.S. business cycles. We specify a time-series model for real GNP and consumption in which the two share a common stochastic trend and transitory component, and Markov-regime switching is used to model business cycle phases in these components. The timing of switches between business cycle phases is allowed to differ across the permanent and transitory components. We find strong evidence of a lead-lag relationship between the switches in the two components. Specifically, switches in the permanent component leads switches in the transitory component when entering recessions.     

Simple Forecasts and Paradigm Shifts

We study the asset pricing implications of learning in an environment in which the true model of the world is a multivariate one, but agents update only over the class of simple univariate models. Thus, if a particular simple model does a poor job of forecasting over a period of time, it is discarded in favor of an alternative simple model. The theory yields a number of distinctive predictions for stock returns, generating forecastable variation in the magnitude of the value‐glamour return differential, in volatility, and in the skewness of returns. We validate several of these predictions empirically.     

A Comparative‐Advantage Approach to Government Debt Maturity

We study optimal government debt maturity in a model where investors derive monetary services from holding riskless short‐term securities. In a setting where the government is the only issuer of such riskless paper, it trades off the monetary premium associated with short‐term debt against the refinancing risk implied by the need to roll over its debt more often. We extend the model to allow private financial intermediaries to compete with the government in the provision of short‐term money‐like claims. We argue that, if there are negative externalities associated with private money creation, the government should tilt its issuance more toward short maturities, thereby partially crowding out the private sector's use of short‐term debt.     

Asset Measurement in Imperfect Credit Markets

How should a firm measure a productive asset used as collateral? To answer this question, we develop a model in which firms borrow funds subject to collateral constraints. We characterize the qualities of optimal asset measurements and analyze their interactions with financing needs, collateral constraints, and interest rates. Because of real effects, complete transparency would reduce contracting efficiency and, hence, the measurement must be suitably adapted to credit conditions. The optimal measurement is asymmetric and reports precise information about high collateral values if credit frictions are low, but the reverse if credit frictions are high. Tighter credit market conditions may lead to more opaque measurements and increased investment, in the form of inefficient continuations.