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Wealth of Two Nations: The U.S. Racial Wealth Gap, 1860-2020
Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2024

Derenoncourt, Ellora; Kim, Chi Hyun; Kuhn, Moritz; Schularick, Moritz
The racial wealth gap is the largest of the economic disparities between Black and white Americans, with a white-to-Black per capita wealth ratio of 6 to 1. It is also among the most persistent. In this article, we construct the first continuous series on white-to-Black per capita wealth ratios from 1860 to 2020, drawing on historical census data, early state tax records, and historical waves of the Survey of Consumer Finances, among other sources. Incorporating these data into a parsimonious model of wealth accumulation for each racial group, we document the role played by initial conditions, income growth, savings behavior, and capital returns in the evolution of the gap. Given vastly different starting conditions under slavery, racial wealth convergence would remain a distant scenario, even if wealth-accumulating conditions had been equal across the two groups since Emancipation. Relative to this equal-conditions benchmark, we find that observed convergence has followed an even slower path over the past 150 years, with convergence stalling after 1950. Since the 1980s, the wealth gap has widened again as capital gains have predominantly benefited white households, and convergence via income growth and savings has come to a halt.

Independent Regulators and Financial Stability Evidence from Gubernatorial Election Campaigns in the Progressive Era
Journal of Financial Economics, 2024

Del Angel, Marco; Richardson, Gary
Regulatory independence forms a foundation for modern financial systems. The institutions' value is illuminated by a Progressive Era policy experiment when independent state-bank regulators came under governors' supervision. Afterwards, bank resolution rates declined during gubernatorial election campaigns for banks supervised by state but not national authorities. This gubernatorial-campaign effect diminished by two orders of magnitude, but did not disappear, after the FDIC became the independent resolver for all insured banks in 1935. In addition, during the Progressive Era, declines in bank resolutions led to declines in business bankruptcy rates, an effect that is not observed in the FDIC era. Our findings indicate regulatory independence can dramatically reduce but may not eliminate politics' impact on banks and the economy.

Measuring Inflation Expectations in Interwar Britain
Economic History Review, 2023

Lennard, Jason; Meinecke, Finn; Solomou, Solomos
What caused the recovery from the British Great Depression? A leading explanation--the 'expectations channel'--suggests that a shift in expected inflation lowered real interest rates and stimulated consumption and investment. However, few studies have measured, or tested the economic consequences of, inflation expectations. In this paper, we collect high-frequency information from primary and secondary sources to measure expected inflation in the United Kingdom between the wars. A high-frequency vector autoregression suggests that inflation expectations were an important source of the early stages of economic recovery in interwar Britain.

Sticky Wages and the Great Depression: Evidence from the United Kingdom
European Review of Economic History, 2023

Lennard, Jason
How sticky were wages during the Great Depression? Although classic accounts emphasise the importance of nominal rigidity in amplifying deflationary shocks, the evidence is limited. In this paper, I calculate the degree of nominal wage rigidity in the United Kingdom between the wars using new granular data covering millions of wages. I find that nominal wages changed infrequently but that wage cuts were more common than wage rises on average. Nominal wage adjustment fluctuated over time and by state, so that in 1931 amid falling output and prices more than one-third of workers received wage cuts.

Dating Business Cycles in the United Kingdom, 1700-2010
Economic History Review, 2023

Broadberry, Stephen; Chadha, Jagjit S.; Lennard, Jason; Thomas, Ryland
This paper constructs a new chronology of the business cycle in the United Kingdom from 1700 on an annual basis and from 1920 on a quarterly basis to 2010. The new chronology points to several observations about the business cycle. First, the cycle has significantly increased in duration and amplitude over time. Second, contractions have become less frequent but are as persistent and costly as at other times in history. Third, the typical recession has been tick-shaped with a short contraction and longer recovery. Finally, the major causes of downturns have been sectoral shocks, financial crises, and wars.

Infographics of Publications by Journal

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    • 2024: Long-Run Trends in Long-Maturity Real Rates, 1311-2022
    • 2024: Real Effects of Supplying Safe Private Money
    • 2024: Shattered Housing
    • 2024: Foreign Debt, Capital Controls, and Secondary Markets: Theory and Evidence from Nazi Germany
    • 2024: Wealth of Two Nations: The U.S. Racial Wealth Gap, 1860-2020
    • 2024: J'Accuse! Antisemitism and Financial Markets in the Time of the Dreyfus Affair
    • 2024: Independent Regulators and Financial Stability Evidence from Gubernatorial Election Campaigns in the Progressive Era
  • Journal of Finance
    • 2023: The Legal Origins of Financial Development: Evidence from the Shanghai Concessions
    • 2021: For Richer, for Poorer: Bankers' Liability and Bank Risk in New England, 1867 to 1880
  • Journal of Financial Economics
    • 2024: Real Effects of Supplying Safe Private Money
    • 2024: Shattered Housing
    • 2024: J'Accuse! Antisemitism and Financial Markets in the Time of the Dreyfus Affair
    • 2024: Independent Regulators and Financial Stability Evidence from Gubernatorial Election Campaigns in the Progressive Era
    • 2024: Why Did Shareholder Liability Disappear?
    • 2023: Reaching for Yield and the Housing Market: Evidence from 18th-Century Amsterdam
    • 2022: The Big Bang: Stock Market Capitalization in the Long Run
    • 2022: Stocks for the Long Run? Evidence from a Broad Sample of Developed Markets
    • 2021: Global Factor Premiums
    • 2021: Dynastic Control without Ownership: Evidence from Post-war Japan
    • 2021: The Telegraph and Modern Banking Development, 1881-1936
    • 2021: Contracting without Contracting Institutions: The Trusted Assistant Loan in 19th Century China
    • 2021: Rejected Stock Exchange Applicants
    • 2020: Credit and Social Unrest: Evidence from 1930s China
    • 2020: Limited Liability and Investment: Evidence from Changes in Marital Property Laws in the US South, 1840-1850
  • Review of Financial Studies
    • 2023: Inflation and Individual Investors' Behavior: Evidence from the German Hyperinflation
    • 2022: Intermediaries and Asset Prices: International Evidence since 1870
    • 2021: Household Inequality, Entrepreneurial Dynamism, and Corporate Financing
    • 2020: Financial Inclusion, Human Capital, and Wealth Accumulation: Evidence from the Freedman's Savings Bank
    • 2019: Private Contracting, Law and Finance
  • Quarterly Journal of Economics
    • 2024: Wealth of Two Nations: The U.S. Racial Wealth Gap, 1860-2020
    • 2022: Reshaping Global Trade: The Immediate and Long-Run Effects of Bank Failures
    • 2022: Sovereign Bonds since Waterloo
    • 2021: Banking Crises without Panics
  • American Economic Review
    • 2024: Long-Run Trends in Long-Maturity Real Rates, 1311-2022
    • 2024: The Ends of 27 Big Depressions
    • 2022: Measuring Geopolitical Risk
    • 2021: The Intergenerational Effects of a Large Wealth Shock: White Southerners after the Civil War
    • 2020: Upping the Ante: The Equilibrium Effects of Unconditional Grants to Private Schools
    • 2020: Factory Productivity and the Concession System of Incorporation in Late Imperial Russia, 1894-1908
  • Journal of Political Economy
    • 2024: Foreign Debt, Capital Controls, and Secondary Markets: Theory and Evidence from Nazi Germany
    • 2022: The Effects of Banking Competition on Growth and Financial Stability: Evidence from the National Banking Era
    • 2021: Discrimination, Managers, and Firm Performance: Evidence from 'Aryanizations' in Nazi Germany
    • 2020: Income and Wealth Inequality in America, 1949-2016
  • Queen's University Belfast
    • 2024: Why Did Shareholder Liability Disappear?
    • 2019: Private Contracting, Law and Finance
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