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.

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.

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.

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.