Davide M. Coluccia

Lecturer (Assistant Professor) of Economics

Working Papers

Return Innovation: The Knowledge Spillovers of the British Migration to the United States, 1870-1940

with Gaia Dossi

   

The cross-country diffusion of technology is a central driver of productivity growth and economic convergence. We document that international migration fosters technology transfer from the destination to the origin country of migrants. We construct an individual-level dataset linking four million British immigrants in the US over 1870--1940 to the UK census and digitize the universe of British patents granted in the 19th century. Double- and triple-difference designs and text analysis applied to patents reveal that migration ties enabled the diffusion of US technology to the UK. Migrants' social networks at home promoted technology diffusion even when migrants did not return.

Emigration Restrictions and Economic Development: Evidence from the Italian Mass Migration to the United States

with Lorenzo Spadavecchia. Revision Requested by the Journal of Labor Economics

     

Between 1920 and 1921, Italian emigration to the United States dropped by 85% after the Emergency Quota Act was passed by Congress, a severely restrictive immigration law. Using newly digitized data from Italian historical censuses in a difference-in-differences setting, we leverage variation in exposure across Italian districts to this large restriction on human mobility. More exposed districts display a sizable population increase. Moreover, the policy substantially hampered the adoption of labor-saving technology. Consistently with directed technology adoption theory, manufacturing employment markedly increased, and evidence suggests that "missing migrants" whose migration was inhibited by the Act drove this result.

Dealing with Adversity: Religiosity or Science? Evidence from the Great Influenza Pandemic

with Enrico Berkes, Gaia Dossi, and Mara P. Squicciarini

   

How do societies respond to adversity? We provide novel evidence focusing on the reaction to the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic in the United States. We document that counties hit harder by the pandemic became both more religious and more scientific. We investigate the underlying mechanism, examining how individuals within counties reacted to the shock. We uncover heterogeneous responses, with religion and science acting as substitute ways of coping with the pandemic. Facing adversity widened the distance in religiosity between science-oriented individuals and the rest of the population and increased the polarization of religious beliefs.

Welcoming the Tired and Poor: Grassroots Associations and Immigrant Assimilation During the Age of Mass Migration

   

I examine the impact of the Progressive-era Settlement movement on the economic and cultural assimilation of immigrants in the United States between 1880 and 1940. Settlements provided services such as job training and childcare to immigrants living in urban centers. Using an individual-level triple difference strategy based on across-neighborhood, cross-cohort, and over-time variation in settlement exposure, I find that settlements had positive labor market effects for men but not for women and increased immigrant segregation along ethnic lines. These responses persisted into the generation exposed to settlements during childhood. The heterogeneous effects of settlement activity across genders partly stem from increased fertility and in-group marriage that excluded women from labor markets, particularly among immigrants originating from countries with more conservative gender norms.

Racial Discrimination and Innovation

with Gaia Dossi and Sebastian Ottinger

   

Can racial discrimination harm innovation? We study this question using data on US inventors linked to population censuses in 1895-1925. Our novel identification strategy leverages plausibly exogenous variation in the timing of lynchings and the name of the victims. We find an immediate and persistent decrease in patents granted to inventors who share their names with the victims of lynchings, but only when victims are Black. We hypothesize that lynchings accentuate the racial content of the victim's name to patent examiners, who cannot observe the inventors' race from patent applications. We interpret these findings as evidence of discrimination by patent examiners and provide results against alternative mechanisms.

Gatekeepers of Growth: Patent Examiners, Innovation, and Industrial Growth in the United States, 1919-1938

 

Patent protection is the most prevalent form of intellectual property protection, yet its impact on innovation and economic growth remains unclear. I introduce a difference-in-differences strategy exploiting the appointment of patent examiners at the U.S. Patent Office from 1919 to 1938. Newly appointed examiners grant 14% more patents to inventors from their home regions. Using examiners' appointments to isolate exogenous spatial variation in patent protection over time, I find that increased patenting fosters growth in manufacturing and income per capita. Increased patenting generates knowledge spillovers, which amplify subsequent innovation, in sectors technologically related to those of the newly appointed examiners.

Selected Work in Progress

Natural Disasters, Industrial Policy, and the Direction of Innovation

with Mara P. Squicciarini

 

This paper examines whether industrial policy can shape innovation in response to natural disasters toward technologies that mitigate their adverse effects. We study the 1871 Great Chicago Fire, leveraging a policy that banned wooden construction in the city after the fire. Using a synthetic control framework, we find that in Chicago, construction patenting and manufacturing increased, with the gains concentrated in non-wood construction. Construction innovation had positive knowledge spillovers on construction-related sectors. As a placebo, we study the 1872 Boston fire, where no post-fire regulations were implemented, and find no significant effects on patenting and a small increase in construction manufacturing.

Liberation Technology? The Impact of the Sewing Machine on Women

with Philipp Ager

 

This paper examines the impact of the sewing machine on women's lives in 19th-century Massachusetts, considering it as both a manufacturing and a household appliance. Leveraging variation in town-level exposure to sewing machines in factories and the presence of household appliance retailers in a difference-in-differences setting, we show that the adoption of sewing machines--both in workplaces and homes--increased female labor force participation. Fertility and marriage rates declined in response to within-factory adoption of sewing machines, but not to household adoption. The individual-level analysis reveals considerable heterogeneity. Poorer women increased their labor supply, reduced marriage rates, and had lower fertility. Wealthier women were more likely to marry and experience increased fertility following household adoption of sewing machines. Moreover, the presence of sewing machine retailers is associated with the rise of upper-class women's associationism. These findings underscore the heterogeneous effects of technological change on women's socioeconomic roles across the wealth distribution.

Sticky Intergenerational Political Preferences

 

This paper examines the persistence of political preferences across generations and quantifies its contribution to political segregation. After the election of prominent government officials—such as the President, or state governors—their name becomes politically connoted. The name of an individual born close to an election year thus reflects the political preferences of their parent(s). I leverage this insight to construct and validate a new individual-level measure of intergenerational transmission of political preferences between 1865 and 1940. I find that political preferences are substantially persistent across generations: the son of a Republican (resp. Democrat) is five times more likely to be a Republican (resp. Democrat) than the son of a Democrat (resp. Republican). Individuals are more likely to sort in politically homogenous neighborhoods, thereby increasing political segregation.

Resting Projects

Durable Goods and Monetary Policy in a Menu-Cost Economy

 

This paper studies the distinctive pricing dynamics of durable goods and analyzes their implications for the conduct of monetary policy in a menu-cost economy. Using price microdata, I document the following new facts: (i) the dispersion of price changes in durables is higher than in nondurables; (ii) the frequency of price adjustment is countercyclical, however durable prices get relatively rigid in recessions; (iii) the dispersion of price changes is countercyclical for durables, and procyclical for nondurables. I develop a menu-cost model embedding durable consumption and calibrate it to match new and consolidated empirical evidence. I use the model to challenge the prevailing view holding that durable goods dampen the real effectiveness of monetary policy. I find that even though durable goods prices are relatively flexible, the model generates substantial monetary non-neutrality. Moreover, this paper puts forward a new channel whereby durable consumption can amplify the real effects of monetary policy. This result is driven by heterogeneous demand pass-through of aggregate shocks across sectors. Higher durable consumption enhances the sensitivity of nondurable output to interest rate shocks thus amplifying monetary non-neutrality.

Pre-Doctoral Research

On the effects of firing costs on employment and welfare in a duopoly market with entry

with Simone D'Alessandro and Nicola Meccheri (2017), in Fanti, L. (ed.), Oligopoly: theories and institutions, Pisa (IT): Pisa University Press.

© 2024 Davide M. Coluccia. Codes on Github.