Collaborative Research: The Macroeconomy, Labor Markets, and Economic Mobility from the Civil War to Today: New High Frequency Data on Local Economic Shocks

摘要地方经济活动的信息对研究和政策评估至关重要。它是对经济增长和不平等，区域发展以及一系列国家和地方政策进行分析的结果。这些信息也是关于个人、群体和公司的行为和福利的关键问题的输入。尽管它们至关重要，但关于美国当地经济状况的系统性历史数据极其有限。这一限制给考察美国经济在一段时期内的演变带来了挑战，这段时期包括地理扩张、人口和政治重组，以及从农村、农业经济向城市工业经济的转变。此外，它对理解美国经济的最新发展构成了挑战，因为其中许多发展都有历史根源，或者依赖于累积或历史的冲击风险。这个项目将产生一个长期的面板在美国当地的经济状况，一个是全面的，高频率的，空间分解，并在1865年至今。该项目将进一步说明这一新数据集的研究潜力，并提供有关20世纪70年代之前美国当地经济状况的第一个系统的高频证据。对于1960年之前的时期，该项目将从美国所有国家特许银行的资产负债表中生成新的数据，并补充各州特许银行和其他存款机构持有的存款信息。从1961年到现在，该项目将合并新收集的数据与现有的信息存款按县。该项目将进一步探讨矿床作为就业或收入等传统地方经济指标的密切和可靠的替代指标，这些指标的高质量历史数据并不容易获得。另外一个数据集将包含所有美国存款机构的详细资产负债表。这些新的数据集将应用于经济学的所有领域，以及更广泛的社会科学和政策评估领域。这些数据将促进对美国经济演变的了解，促进对先前数据所掩盖的关键本地动态的理解。通过填补国家数据基础设施的巨大空白，该项目将为经济知识和政策有效性做出贡献。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

AbstractInformation on local economic activity is crucial to research and policy evaluation. It is an outcome of interest in the analysis of economic growth and inequality, regional development, and a range of national and local policies. This information is also an input to key questions about the behavior and welfare of individuals, cohorts, and firms. Despite their paramount importance, systematic historical data on local economic conditions in the US are extremely limited. This limitation creates challenges in examining the evolution of the US economy during a period that includes geographic expansion, demographic and political realignment, and transformation from a rural, agrarian economy into an urban industrial one. Moreover, it poses challenges in understanding more recent developments in the US economy, since many of these have historical roots, or depend on cumulative or historical exposure to shocks. This project will generate a long-run panel on local economic conditions in the US—one that is comprehensive, high-frequency, spatially-disaggregate, and available consistently over the period 1865-present. The project will further illustrate the research potential of this new dataset and provide the first systematic, high-frequency evidence on local economic conditions in the US prior to the 1970s.The panel dataset will comprise deposits of all households and firms in each county-year from 1865-present. For the period before 1960, the project will generate new data from the balance sheets of all nationally-chartered banks in the US, and supplement this with information on deposits held by state-chartered banks and other depository institutions. From 1961 to the present, the project will merge newly-collected data with existing information on deposits by county. The project will further explore deposits as a close and reliable proxy for traditional local economic indicators, such as employment or income, for which high-quality historical data are not readily available. An additional dataset will contain the detailed balance sheets of all US depository institutions underlying the county panel. These new datasets will have applications to all fields of economics, as well as across broader social science and policy evaluation spheres. The data will advance knowledge on the evolution of the US economy, fostering an understanding of critical local dynamics that previous data have obscured. By filling a substantial gap in the nation’s data infrastructure, this project will contribute to both economic knowledge and policy effectiveness.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.