W. Walker Hanlon
Teaching
Current
- Economic History (Northwestern)
Previous
Publications
Published and Accepted Papers
(reverse chronological order)Culture and the Historical Fertility Transition (with Brian Beach)
Accepted, Review of Economic Studies
Coverage: VoxEU
London Fog: A Century of Pollution and Mortality, 1866-1965
Review of Economics and Statistics
Spillover Effects of IP Protection in the Inter-war Aircraft Industry (with Taylor Jaworski)
Accepted, Economic Journal
Coverage: VoxEU
Recessions, Mortality, and Migration Bias: Evidence from the Lancashire Cotton Famine (with V. Arthi and B. Beach)
Accepted, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics
Previously circulated as "Estimating the Recession-Mortality Relationship when Migration Matters"
History and Urban Economics (Review article, with Stephan Heblich)
Accepted, Regional Science and Urban Economics
Temperature, Disease, and Death in London: Analyzing Weekly Data for the Century from 1866-1965 (with Casper Worm Hansen and Jake Kantor)
Journal of Economic History, March 2021, Vol. 81, No. 1, pp. 40-80.
Coverage: VoxEU
The Persistent Effect of Temporary Input Cost Advantages in Shipbuilding, 1850-1911
Journal of the European Economic Association , December 2020, 18(6), pp. 3173-3209.
Coal Smoke, City Growth, and the Costs of the Industrial Revolution
Economic Journal, February 2020, 130(626), pp. 462-488.
Skilled Immigrants and American Industrialization: Lessons from Newport News Shipyard
Business History Review , 2018, 92(4), pp. 605-632.
Coal Smoke and Mortality in an Early Industrial Economy (with Brian Beach)
Economic Journal, November 2018, 128(615), pp. 2652-2675.
Subsumes "Pollution and Mortality in the 19th Century"
Coverage: VoxDev
Agglomeration: A Long-Run Panel Data Approach (with Antonio Miscio)
Journal of Urban Economics , Vol. 99, May 2017, pp. 1-14.
Data Appendix: See Data Resources section below
Book Review: The Pox of Liberty: How the Constitution Left Americans Rich, Free, and Prone to Infection. By Werner Troesken.
Journal of Economic History Dec. 2016, v. 76 no. 4, pp. 1240-1242
Review of Economics & Statistics , March 2017, 99(1), p. 67-79.
Subsumes "Industry Connections and the Geographic Location of Economic Activity"
Necessity is the Mother of Invention: Input Supplies and Directed Technical Change
Econometrica , January 2015, 83(1), pp. 67-100.
Killer Cities: Past and Present (with Yuan Tian)
American Economic Review, Papers & Proceedings , May 2015, 105(5), pp. 570-575
Do better monitoring institutions increase leadership quality in community organizations? Evidence from Uganda. -- with Guy Grossman
American Journal of Political Science , July 2014, v. 58, pp. 669-686.
Book Project
The Rise and Fall of Laissez Faire
Status: Under contract, Princeton University Press
Working Papers
The Rise of the Engineer: Inventing the Professional Inventor During the Industrial Revolution
Status: Draft updated January 29, 2022
Press:
Draft updated January 20, 2023
With Stephan Heblich, Ferdinando Monte, Martin Schmitz
Status: Updated draft posted May 18, 2022
Why Britain? The Right Place (in the Technology Space) at the Right Time
Latest draft: NBER Summer Institute version
With Carl Hallmann and Lukas Rosenberger
Historical Newspaper Data: A Researcher's Guide and Toolkit
With Brian Beach
Status: R&R at Explorations in Economic History
Description: Review article providing tools for researchers interested in working with digitized historical newspaper databases.
Updated June 6, 2022
Bridging Science and Technology During the Industrial Revolution
Description: Very preliminary follow-up paper to "The Rise of the Engineer"
Older unpublished working papers
Endogenous City Disamenities: Lessons from Industrial Pollution in 19th Century Britain
Available from the Ziman Center Working Paper Series here
This paper was a precursor to "Coal Smoke and the Costs of the Industrial Revolution"
Pollution and Maternal Mortality: Evidence from the London Fog (with Katherin Sudol)
Status: New draft completed July 9, 2018. Available upon request.
Data Resources
British Patent Classification Database, 1855-1882
Database of all British patents from 1855-1882 with technology classifications from the British Patent Office
British City-Industry Database, 1851-1911
Database describing employment in 26 private sector industries in 31 large English cities from 1851-1911
Version 2.0: Updated March, 2016