Works in Progress
U.S. Insurance Capital, 1880 - 1950 [Link]
This project’s objective is to understand the evolution and economic role of life and property insurance companies in the U.S. during the 19th and 20th centuries by creating a new, comprehensive firm-level panel database. To the best of my knowledge, disaggregated information about the insurance industry before 1980 is sparse despite the economic importance of these financial intermediaries in public and private debt markets. I digitize publicly available historical documents from regulatory filings and industry publications between 1880 and 1950 and collect income statements, balance sheets, security-level holdings, and state-level mortgage and real estate investments from all insurance companies conducting business in the state of New York (95% of aggregate).
Working Papers
I examine the effects of public debt on municipal services and employment during financial crises, using a unique archival dataset of U.S. city budgets, bonds, and Census records of municipal workers from 1924 to 1941. Unlike today’s countercyclical fiscal policies, the Great Depression provides a rare setting to observe fiscal shocks without substantial intergovernmental or Federal Reserve support. As urban growth halted abruptly during the Depression, cities with high pre-crisis debt faced significant austerity pressures, with skilled workers leaving public service. My findings show that financial market frictions—especially the need to refinance debt—led cities to sharply cut expenditures, particularly on capital projects and police services.
Between 1910 and 1940, the high school graduation rate in the United States increased five-fold, setting the stage for human capital-led economic growth throughout the 20th century. This study examines the effects of the Great Depression’s surge in youth unemployment on educational attainment during the 1930s, with a focus on gender and socioeconomic disparities. Using data from the 1940 Census and novel city-level unemployment rates, the analysis shows that increased youth unemployment significantly boosted high school and post-secondary completion rates among young males, particularly those from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. In contrast, the effect on females and lower-income youths was negligible. I find minimal short-term labor market impacts by 1940. The results highlight the critical role of household resources in leveraging educational opportunities during the Great Depression and suggest that financial constraints may have prevented disadvantaged groups from benefiting equally from reduced opportunity costs during a crucial period during the high school movement.
Financial crises often lead to slow economic recovery, possibly due to credit rationing by financial intermediaries. This paper examines the impact of the Atlanta Federal Reserve’s lender of last resort (LLR) policies during the Great Depression, leveraging newly digitized archival data on county-level banking, manufacturing, and industry structure from the 1920s and 1930s. Exploiting the quasi-exogenous placement of borders, I evaluate banking and industrial outcomes across counties and plants. The results show that LLR policies significantly reduced bank failures and improved small and medium-sized firm survival rates. However, manufacturing output and employment for surviving firms saw no clear improvement, emphasizing the extensive margin as the primary channel of LLR efficacy.
Publications
[2] Baker, S. R., Janas, P., & Kueng, L. (2025). Correlation in state and local tax changes. Journal of Public Economics, 242, 105275. [LINK]
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[1] Janas, P. (2023). Financial Crises and Economic Growth: U.S. Cities, Counties, and School Districts during the Great Depression (Summaries of Doctoral Dissertations for the Nevins Prize). Journal of Economic History, 83(2), 582-586. [LINK]