Essays on the impacts of weather shocks and electrification evidence from the early twentieth century U.S.

This thesis combines historical research with economic theory and machine learning methods to explore the impact of electricity access and weather variability on labour markets. Its main contribution is the creation of two large datasets of local electricity infrastructure in the U.S. during the early twentieth century. The thesis is organised into four chapters: an introduction, two chapters on electricity access and one on weather variability. The second chapter describes the creation of a new dataset about households’ access to electric lights at the city and county levels. It looks at the differences in spatial patterns between the diffusion of arc and incandescent lights. The third chapter looks at the impact of rural electrification on local development in the Western U.S. between 1900 and 1930. Data are from a new dataset about transmission lines digitised from engineering journals. Identification is possible due to the peculiar geography of the Western U.S., where transmission lines crossed rural communities, resulting in exogenous variation in electricity access. This paper concludes that there was a small but significant impact on land values between 1900 and 1910. The fourth chapter looks at the impact of an increase in excessively high temperatures on the transition from agricultural to non-agricultural occupations. In line with the existing literature, I find that there is no effect on employment status but that areas with higher weather variability experience a more accentuated transition into the secondary sector. This thesis ends with a conclusion which summarizes the main findings of each chapter, suggests implications for current policy design, and highlights possible avenues for further research.