2024 - "Is Deflation Cause for Panic? Evidence from the National Banking Era." Journal of Macroeconomics. 82: 1-25.

2023 - "The Myth of Wartime Prosperity: Evidence from the Canadian Experience." (with Vincent Geloso).  Social Science Quarterly. 104(4): 377–394.

2022 - "Preferential Attachment and Carl Menger’s Theory of the Endogenous Emergence of a Medium of Exchange." Cosmos and Taxis: Studies in Emergent Order and Organization. 10(5+6): 47–60.

Rethinking Deflation and its Effects: Lessons from Canada Under the Classical Gold Standard (with Bryan Cutsinger)

• Submitted and under consideration

The Potlatch as Memory.

Abstract: The Potlatch—a complex ceremony central to many Indigenous communities along the Pacific Northwest—is a unique institution that supports gift-giving as the primary way to allocate goods within these communities. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, government and church officials increasingly sought to prohibit the Potlatch, criticizing it as wasteful and irrational. To present a counter-narrative, I draw from the monetary search literature to construct a decentralized exchange model that includes endogenous recordkeeping and specialization. I posit that the Potlatch’s ceremonial elements and dramatic retellings of the past—through song, dance, and storytelling—represent investments in social memory that deter free-riding and reinforce gift-giving norms. These investments, in turn, increase the extent of the market and make specialization more attractive, suggesting that the Potlatch could enhance wealth and welfare, contrary to non-Indigenous perceptions. My theoretical analysis integrates qualitative evidence and analytic narrative to support this conclusion.

Reexamining the Wheat Boom: New Evidence for Structural Breaks in Canadian Economic Growth. (with Jamie Bologna Pavlik and Vincent Geloso.)

Abstract: In the last years of the 19th century until the onset of World War I, Canada experienced a major increase in living standards, with real incomes per capita nearly doubling in an 18-year span (1896-1913). Some claim this came about from western settlement and export-led growth from natural resources, dubbing it the “Wheat Boom”. Others believe manufacturing, modernization, and urbanization in the eastern cities were the primary causes, with others still contending this was not a structural break at all but an uptick in the business cycle. We use newly corrected national output data alongside previously unavailable econometric tests, such as synthetic control methods, and find that there was indeed a structural break in growth in the late 19th century. We conclude that this break was unique to Canada and that annual real per capita income growth was, on average, 2.15% higher than our counterfactual after 1896, cumulatively leading to incomes being 33.6% higher by 1913. However, exploiting features of the synthetic control method allows us to determine that capital investments, not wheat exports, appear to be the primary causal driver. Lastly, we discuss how this relates to the historical mistreatment of Indigenous peoples in Canada over the same time period.

An Exploration of Indigenous Access to Banking Services Historically in Canada: A Spatial Analysis.          

Abstract: This paper builds a novel dataset of the location of charted bank branches in Canada between 1840 and 1935 – between the founding of the Province of Canada via the merger of Upper and Lower Canada (now Ontario and Quebec) and the establishment of the Bank of Canada (which ended private supply of large denomination notes). We then use this dataset to explore Indigenous communities’ access to financial services along two dimensions. First, as the branch network expanded, we test if the location of new branches relative to Indigenous communities was correlated with the community’s size and affluence. Here, we are looking to determine if chartered banks saw Indigenous communities as potential sources of customers or if they were disregarded in the location decision (possibly due to ignorance or bias). Second, we test if an Indigenous community being historically closer to a bank branch is a predictor of use of financial services and of participation in related programs to promote financial inclusion today. The proposed mechanism here is that geographic proximity to banks increases familiarity and awareness of financial institutions and, through this, helps build trust and financial acumen—a predictor of overall access to finance—which can be passed through generations over time. 

• ACEA Annual Conference 2024 - Halifax, Nova Scotia - October 25-27, 2024