NYU Urban Seminar: MATTHEW FREEDMAN

September 22, 2015

12:15 pm - 1:45 pm, Vanderbilt Hall, Room 208, 40 Washington Square South, New York City (RSVP here)

Matthew Freedman will discuss his paper, Persistence in Industrial Policy Impacts: Evidence from Depression-Era Mississippi. The presentation will highlight the effects of a large-scale industrial policy implemented in 1930s Mississippi on contemporaneous and modern-day labor market outcomes. Attracted by unprecedented government incentives under Mississippi’s Balance Agriculture with Industry (BAWI) Program, 13 large manufacturing plants located in the state between 1936 and 1940. Using difference-in-differences and synthetic control matching techniques, Freedman estimates that counties that received these plants experienced an over 15% increase in female labor force participation on average in the short run. Moreover, these effects persisted decades into the future, well after many of the original companies ceased operations in Mississippi. The results highlight the potential for even transitory government interventions to have long-lived effects on labor markets.

Matthew Freedman is an Associate Professor of Economics at Drexel University whose interests lie at the intersection of labor economics, public finance, and urban economics.