Essays on Economic History

The first chapter of my dissertation uses a competition framework to reexamine the U.S. railway expansion from 1870 to 1890. Do reductions in trade costs increase the income levels of trading regions? The answer of most theoretical trade models is yes, and these models are used by policy-makers to justify investments in new transportation infrastructure to reduce trade costs. I reexamine this question by investigating the impact of the U.S. railway expansion from 1870 to 1890 on county economic growth. My main insight is that while the construction of a new transportation network can benefit a location by increasing producers' access to markets, it also can hurt a location by giving other locations a competitive edge. I derive and test empirically testable implications of the joint effects of market access and competition on economic outcomes from a multisector trade model. I find that on average more than 50% of the benefit of market access is offset by the negative effects of competition. Overall, I find that the expansion of railways increased agricultural land values by 20% to 40%, thus implying that railways explain 1% to 2% of 1890 GNP. My estimates of the impact of railways on American economic growth are lower than those of Donaldson and Hornbeck (2016) and closer to those of Fogel (1964).In the second chapter I study the effects of sector-specific productivity shocks on the distribution of production. The general-equilibrium trade model implies that the production in a certain location depends not only on its own productivity shocks but also on productivity shocks in competing locations. I derive several testable implications of the joint effects of one location's own productivity shock and productivity shocks in competing locations on the location's production. I test these implications by investigating the impact of the boll weevil in the early 20th century United States on the cotton belt's cotton acreage. I find (1) when few lands in the cotton belt wer