Thor Berger

I am Associate Professor in Economic History at Lund University, Pro Futura Scientia Fellow XVI at SCAS, Research Fellow at the CEPR, and Affiliated Researcher at IFN. I also serve on the editorial board of the Journal of Economic History and the European Review of Economic History.

A longer blurb about me

I am an economic historian interested in questions at the intersection of economic history, economic geography, and urban economics. My research employs historical big data and econometric methods to examine the forces shaping growth, innovation, and opportunity across cities and regions. A central theme of my work is understanding how policy interventions can alter spatial development trajectories and how technology shocks affect the fortunes of firms, individuals, and places in both the short and long run.

My research has been published in academic journals spanning economics, economic geography, economic history, general science, and sociology and has been widely featured in media outlets such as the BBC, CNN, the Economist, Financial Times, the Guardian, the New York Times, Scientific American, and Wall Street Journal, as well as being cited by organizations such as the World Bank and the WTO. I have also contributed expert advice on growth, technology, and regional development to the European Commission, the OECD, the Swedish Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation, and the United Nations. See CV for a full list of my professional activities and writing.

Working Papers

Cities and the rise of working womenwith Mounir Karadja and Erik Prawitz.
Abstract ↓Current Draft CEPR dp | Status: R&R Economic Journal

This paper documents the key role played by large cities in shaping women's economic advances in the early 20th century. Using linked census data, we show that female migrants to large cities in Sweden and the United States experienced substantial increases in FLFP and reductions in marriage and fertility. Focusing on migrants to Stockholm, we find increases in FLFP of about 50 percentage points and similarly large decreases in marriage rates that persist over the life cycle. Increases in FLFP were primarily driven by a transition into service jobs, reflecting the early structural shift toward services in major American and European cities.
Guilds and growth: evidence from the Free Citywith Peter Sandholt Jensen.
Abstract ↓Current Draft CEPR dp | Status: submitted

Craft guilds were among the most influential labor market institutions in European history, yet whether they facilitated or stifled economic development remains a matter of great debate. We use a quasi-natural experiment in 18th-century Sweden where guilds were abolished in a single city to show that abolition led to sharp increases in growth and structural transformation. We corroborate a negative effect of guilds on growth using cross-city evidence from Sweden's nationwide guild abolition and the staggered abolition across European countries. Although guilds hampered growth, we show that the pre-industrial accumulation of artisanal skills is a key predictor of growth and innovation during industrialization when labor market frictions were sharply reduced.

Work in Progress

Modernization and madness.
Engines of liberation? Technology and the decline of child labor.
Deskilling: firm evidence from Europe and the United States.
Market integration and structural transformation, with Ingvild Almås, Timo Boppart, Konrad Burchardi, and Hannes Malmberg.
Let there be light: illumination and the geography of development, with Erik Prawitz.
A rural revolution? Regional development and the rise of the savings bank movement.
Wheels of change: agricultural automation and human capital in the 20th century.
Power and peril: the human costs of technological change.
Industrialization and the rise of the welfare state, with Konrad Burchardi and Erik Prawitz.
City of my dreams: health, mobility, and innovation in Stockholm, with Mounir Karadja, Erik Prawitz, and Martin Önnerfors.

Publications

Institutional innovation and the adoption of new technologies: the case of steamwith Vinzent Ostermeyer, Journal of Economic History, 2025.
Abstract ↓ PDF VoxEU Citation ↓
```
@article{Berger2025steam,
  author    = {Berger, Thor and Ostermeyer, Vinzent},
  title     = {Institutional Innovation and the Adoption of New Technologies: The Case of Steam},
  journal   = {Journal of Economic History},
  year      = {2025},
  volume    = {85},
  number    = {3},
  pages     = {844--873},
  doi       = {10.1017/S0022050725100855}
}
```
This paper documents how the advent of the limited liability corporation contributed to the diffusion of steam technology during Sweden's industrialization. Using longitudinal establishment-level data, we show that incorporation sharply raised the probability that industrial establishments adopted steam. Incorporation facilitated technology adoption partly by enabling smaller establishments to expand to a greater scale, where the use of steam became feasible. These results highlight that low barriers to incorporation may be an important lever for facilitating the diffusion of new technologies.
Historical manufacturing census of Sweden: Data description and quality assessmentwith Ingvild Almås, Timo Boppart, Konrad Burchardi, Olof Ejermo, Björn Eriksson, Anders Larsson, Hannes Malmberg, Stefan Maukner, Mats Olsson, and Vinzent Ostermeyer, Historical Methods, 2025.
Abstract ↓ PDF HMCS website Citation ↓
```
@article{Almas2025hmcs,
  author    = {Alm{\aa}s, Ingvild and Berger, Thor and Boppart, Timo and Burchardi, Konrad and Ejermo, Olof and Eriksson, Bj{\"{o}}rn and Larsson, Anders and Malmberg, Hannes and Maukner, Stefan and Olsson, Mats and Ostermeyer, Vinzent},
  title     = {Historical Manufacturing Census of Sweden: Data Description and Quality Assessment},
  journal   = {Historical Methods},
  year      = {2026},
  volume    = {59},
  number    = {1},
  pages     = {20--38},
  doi       = {10.1080/01615440.2025.2527132}
}
```
This article presents a comprehensive database featuring the digitized, cleaned, geocoded, and linked data of the Swedish manufacturing censuses between 1863 and 1900. The data covers close to the universe of Swedish manufacturing activity and includes establishment-level information on workers, the sum of production value, and toll as output value. We discuss each variable's definition, how it changed over time, and provide an assessment of the reliability of the data. To the best of our knowledge, this is among the earliest sources of annual, establishment-level data worldwide.
Firm survival and the rise of the factorywith Vinzent Ostermeyer, Economic History Review, 2025.
Abstract ↓ PDF Citation ↓
```
@article{Berger2025factory,
  author    = {Berger, Thor and Ostermeyer, Vinzent},
  title     = {Firm Survival and the Rise of the Factory},
  journal   = {Economic History Review},
  year      = {2025},
  volume    = {78},
  number    = {1},
  pages     = {62--86},
  doi       = {10.1111/ehr.13328}
}
```
This paper uses longitudinal establishment-level data to trace the rise of the factory during Sweden's industrialization between 1864 and 1890. We document a sharp shift from the small artisan shop to the mechanized factory, which can largely be ascribed to differences in survival. Whilst non-mechanized establishments could compete with the factory during early industrialization, a distinct survival advantage of the factory appeared at later stages. The evolving advantage of the factory can mainly be attributed to its larger scale, labour productivity, and technology use.
Inventors among the "Impoverished Sophisticate"with Erik Prawitz, Journal of Economic History, 2024.
Abstract ↓ PDF Citation ↓
```
@article{Berger2024inventors,
  author    = {Berger, Thor and Prawitz, Erik},
  title     = {Inventors among the ``Impoverished Sophisticate''},
  journal   = {Journal of Economic History},
  year      = {2024},
  volume    = {84},
  number    = {4},
  pages     = {1175--1207},
  doi       = {10.1017/S0022050724000433}
}
```
This paper examines the identity and origins of Swedish inventors prior to WWI, drawing on the universe of patent records linked to census data. We document that the rise of innovation during Sweden's industrialization can largely be attributed to a small industrial elite belonging to the upper-tail of the economic, educational, and social status distribution. Analyzing children's opportunities to become inventors, we show that inventions were disproportionately drawn from privileged family backgrounds. However, innovation was a path to upward mobility for the middle- and working-class children that managed to overcome the barriers to entry.
Collaboration and connectivity: Historical evidence from patent recordswith Erik Prawitz, Journal of Urban Economics, 2024.
Abstract ↓ PDF VoxTalks Citation ↓
```
@article{Berger2024collaboration,
  author    = {Berger, Thor and Prawitz, Erik},
  title     = {Collaboration and Connectivity: Historical Evidence from Patent Records},
  journal   = {Journal of Urban Economics},
  year      = {2024},
  volume    = {139},
  pages     = {103629},
  doi       = {10.1016/j.jue.2023.103629}
}
```
Why has collaboration become increasingly central to technological progress? We document the role of lowered travel costs by combining patent data with the rollout of the Swedish railway network in the 19th and early-20th century. Inventors that gain access to the network are more likely to produce collaborative patents, which is partly driven by long-distance collaboration with other inventors residing along the emerging railroad network. These results suggest that the declining costs of interacting with others is fundamental to account for the long-term increase in inventive collaboration.
Social mobility in Sweden before the welfare statewith Per Engzell, Björn Eriksson, and Jakob Molinder, Journal of Economic History, 2023.
Abstract ↓ PDF Citation ↓
```
@article{Berger2023mobility,
  author    = {Berger, Thor and Engzell, Per and Eriksson, Bj{\"{o}}rn and Molinder, Jakob},
  title     = {Social Mobility in Sweden before the Welfare State},
  journal   = {Journal of Economic History},
  year      = {2023},
  volume    = {83},
  number    = {2},
  pages     = {431--463},
  doi       = {10.1017/S0022050723000098}
}
```
We use historical census data to show that Sweden exhibited high levels of intergenerational occupational mobility several decades before the rise of the welfare state. Mobility rates were higher than in other nineteenth- and twentieth-century European countries, closer to those observed in the highly mobile nineteenth-century United States. We leverage mobility variation across Swedish municipalities to shed light on potential determinants: economic growth and migration are positively correlated with mobility, consistent with the patterns observed across countries.
Making a market: Infrastructure, integration, and the rise of innovationwith David Andersson and Erik Prawitz, Review of Economics and Statistics, 2023.
Abstract ↓ PDF Citation ↓
```
@article{Andersson2023market,
  author    = {Andersson, David and Berger, Thor and Prawitz, Erik},
  title     = {Making a Market: Infrastructure, Integration, and the Rise of Innovation},
  journal   = {Review of Economics and Statistics},
  year      = {2023},
  volume    = {105},
  number    = {2},
  pages     = {258--274},
  doi       = {10.1162/rest_a_01067}
}
```
We exploit exogenous variation arising from the historical rollout of the Swedish railroad network across municipalities to identify the impacts of improved transport infrastructure on innovative activity. A network connection led to a local surge in patenting due to an increased entry and productivity of inventors. As the railroad network expanded, inventors in connected areas began to develop ideas with applications outside the local economy, which were subsequently sold to firms along the network. Our findings suggest that reductions in communication and transportation costs were an important driver of the historical emergence of a market for ideas.
Industrial automation and intergenerational income mobility in the United Stateswith Per Engzell, Social Science Research, 2022.
Abstract ↓ PDF Citation ↓
```
@article{Berger2022automation,
  author    = {Berger, Thor and Engzell, Per},
  title     = {Industrial Automation and Intergenerational Income Mobility in the United States},
  journal   = {Social Science Research},
  year      = {2022},
  volume    = {104},
  pages     = {102686},
  doi       = {10.1016/j.ssresearch.2021.102686}
}
```
This article examines how the automation of jobs has shaped spatial patterns of intergenerational income mobility in the United States over the past three decades. Using data on the spread of industrial robots across 722 local labor markets, we find significantly lower rates of upward mobility in areas more exposed to automation. The erosion of mobility chances is rooted in childhood environments and is particularly evident among males growing up in low-income households.
Trends and disparities in subjective upward mobility since 1940with Per Engzell, Socius, 2020.
Abstract ↓ PDF Citation ↓
```
@article{Berger2020subjective,
  author    = {Berger, Thor and Engzell, Per},
  title     = {Trends and Disparities in Subjective Upward Mobility since 1940},
  journal   = {Socius},
  year      = {2020},
  volume    = {6},
  pages     = {1--11},
  doi       = {10.1177/2378023120951139}
}
```
Using General Social Survey data, we ask whether people actually feel that their standard of living is falling short of that of previous generations. In contrast to data on income, education, or occupation, a majority still perceive that they have attained a higher standard of living than their parents. At the same time, mobility experiences are becoming increasingly polarized: subjective upward mobility is rising among highly educated, minority, and urban populations and declining among less educated and rural populations.
American geography of opportunity reveals European originswith Per Engzell, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 2019.
Abstract ↓ PDF VoxEU PNAS podcast Citation ↓
```
@article{Berger2019geography,
  author    = {Berger, Thor and Engzell, Per},
  title     = {American Geography of Opportunity Reveals {E}uropean Origins},
  journal   = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences},
  year      = {2019},
  volume    = {116},
  number    = {13},
  pages     = {6045--6050},
  doi       = {10.1073/pnas.1810893116}
}
```
We show that US areas populated by descendants of European immigrants have similar levels of income equality and mobility as the countries their forebears came from: highest in areas dominated by descendants of Scandinavian and German immigrants, lower in places with French or Italian heritage, and lower still in areas with British roots. Similar variation in mobility is found for the black population and when analyzing causal place effects, suggesting that mobility differences arise at the community level. Our findings indicate that the geography of US opportunity may have deeper historical roots than previously recognized.
Railroads and rural industrialization: Evidence from a historical policy experimentExplorations in Economic History, 2019.
Abstract ↓ PDF Citation ↓
```
@article{Berger2019railroads,
  author    = {Berger, Thor},
  title     = {Railroads and Rural Industrialization: Evidence from a Historical Policy Experiment},
  journal   = {Explorations in Economic History},
  year      = {2019},
  volume    = {74},
  pages     = {101277},
  doi       = {10.1016/j.eeh.2019.06.002}
}
```
This paper studies the impact of railroads on growth and structural transformation in 19th-century Sweden. To establish causality, the analysis exploits that the main state-owned lines of the railway network were constructed according to a politically determined plan. Areas "accidentally" traversed by one of these trunk lines experienced substantially more rapid population growth and structural transformation over the next 50 years. These findings suggest that investments in transportation networks can spur industrial development and that the railroad is an important factor to account for in Sweden's rapid catch-up with the leading European industrializers.
Adopting a new technology: potatoes and population growth in the peripheryEconomic History Review, 2019.
Abstract ↓ PDF Citation ↓
```
@article{Berger2019potatoes,
  author    = {Berger, Thor},
  title     = {Adopting a New Technology: Potatoes and Population Growth in the Periphery},
  journal   = {Economic History Review},
  year      = {2019},
  volume    = {72},
  number    = {3},
  pages     = {869--896},
  doi       = {10.1111/ehr.12743}
}
```
Sweden's population doubled in size between 1750 and 1850 despite a century of stagnating per capita incomes and real wages, which has led many historians to attribute the population explosion to the introduction of the potato. This article provides the first systematic evidence on the potato's contribution to Swedish living standards and population growth. Potatoes at least doubled output per acre, and welfare ratios that account for potato consumption imply that they raised living standards significantly for labourers. Estimates that exploit regional differences in the suitability of land for cultivating potatoes further show that cities, counties, and rural parishes with more land suitable for potato cultivation experienced a sharp relative acceleration in population growth as the potato spread in the early nineteenth century. An expansion of the population was mainly driven by relative increases in fertility and, consistent with Malthusian predictions, there was no long-run impact on per capita incomes. According to these estimates, the introduction and spread of the potato can account for one-tenth of population growth between 1800 and 1850, thus suggesting that it was an important catalyst for the Swedish population explosion.
Elites and the expansion of education in nineteenth-century Swedenwith Jens Andersson, Economic History Review, 2019.
Abstract ↓ PDF Citation ↓
```
@article{Andersson2019elites,
  author    = {Andersson, Jens and Berger, Thor},
  title     = {Elites and the Expansion of Education in Nineteenth-Century {S}weden},
  journal   = {Economic History Review},
  year      = {2019},
  volume    = {72},
  number    = {3},
  pages     = {897--924},
  doi       = {10.1111/ehr.12738}
}
```
A large literature emphasizes that elite capture of political institutions hampered the spread of mass schooling in the nineteenth and twentieth century. We collect new data on investments in elementary education and the distribution of voting rights for more than 2,200 local governments in nineteenth-century Sweden and document that educational expenditure was higher where the distribution of political power was more unequal. In particular, areas governed by local landed elites spent substantially more on primary schooling. Our findings lend quantitative support to a voluminous literature produced by economic and social historians which argues that landed elites advanced mass schooling as part of their historical role as patrons of the local community and as a response to the increasing proletarianization of the rural population, while also furthering our understanding of how Sweden maintained a high level of human capital despite its low level of economic development and restricted franchise in the nineteenth century.
Uber happy? Work and well-being in the "gig economy"with Carl Benedikt Frey, Guy Levin, and Santosh Rao Danda, Economic Policy, 2019.
Abstract ↓ PDF Citation ↓
```
@article{Berger2019uber,
  author    = {Berger, Thor and Frey, Carl Benedikt and Levin, Guy and Danda, Santosh Rao},
  title     = {Uber Happy? Work and Well-Being in the ``{G}ig {E}conomy''},
  journal   = {Economic Policy},
  year      = {2019},
  volume    = {34},
  number    = {99},
  pages     = {429--477},
  doi       = {10.1093/epolic/eiz007}
}
```
We study the rise of the so-called 'gig economy' through the lens of Uber and its drivers in the United Kingdom. Using administrative data from Uber and a new representative survey of London drivers, we explore their backgrounds, earnings, and subjective well-being. We find that the vast majority of Uber drivers are male immigrants, primarily drawn from the bottom half of the London income distribution. Most transitioned out of permanent part- or full-time jobs and about half of drivers report that their incomes increased after partnering with Uber. After covering vehicle operation costs and Uber's service fee, we estimate that the median London driver earns about £11 per hour spent logged into the app. But while Uber drivers remain at the lower end of the London income distribution, they report higher levels of life satisfaction than other workers. Consistent with a trade-off between evaluative and emotional well-being observed among the self-employed, they also report higher anxiety levels. We hypothesize that the higher life satisfaction among Uber drivers partly reflects their preferences for flexibility and the autonomy that the platform offers.
Places of persistence: Slavery and the geography of intergenerational mobility in the United StatesDemography, 2018.
Abstract ↓ PDF Citation ↓
```
@article{Berger2018slavery,
  author    = {Berger, Thor},
  title     = {Places of Persistence: Slavery and the Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the {U}nited {S}tates},
  journal   = {Demography},
  year      = {2018},
  volume    = {55},
  number    = {4},
  pages     = {1547--1565},
  doi       = {10.1007/s13524-018-0693-4}
}
```
Intergenerational mobility has remained stable over recent decades in the United States but varies sharply across the country. In this article, I document that areas with more prevalent slavery by the outbreak of the Civil War exhibit substantially less upward mobility today. I find a negative link between prior slavery and contemporary intergenerational mobility within states, when controlling for a wide range of historical and contemporary factors including income and inequality, focusing on the historical slave states, using a variety of mobility measures, and when exploiting geographical differences in the suitability for cultivating cotton as an instrument for the prevalence of slavery. As a first step to disentangle the underlying channels of persistence, I examine whether any of the five broad factors highlighted by Chetty et al. (2014) as the most important correlates of upward mobility—family structure, income inequality, school quality, segregation, and social capital—can account for the link between earlier slavery and current mobility. More fragile family structures in areas where slavery was more prevalent, as reflected in lower marriage rates and a larger share of children living in single-parent households, is seemingly the most relevant to understand why it still shapes the geography of opportunity in the United States.
Drivers of disruption? Estimating the Uber effectwith Chinchih Chen and Carl Benedikt Frey, European Economic Review, 2018.
Abstract ↓ PDF Citation ↓
```
@article{Berger2018uber,
  author    = {Berger, Thor and Chen, Chinchih and Frey, Carl Benedikt},
  title     = {Drivers of Disruption? Estimating the {U}ber Effect},
  journal   = {European Economic Review},
  year      = {2018},
  volume    = {110},
  pages     = {197--210},
  doi       = {10.1016/j.euroecorev.2018.05.006}
}
```
A frequent belief is that the rise of so-called 'gig work' has led to the displacement of workers in a wide range of traditional jobs. This paper examines the impacts of the flagship of the gig economy—Uber—on workers employed in conventional taxi services. Our analysis exploits newly collected data on the staggered rollout of Uber across metropolitan areas in the United States and a difference-in-differences design to document that incumbent taxi drivers experienced a relative earnings decline of about 10 percent subsequent to Uber's entry into a new market, while there are no significant effects on their labor supply. Additional evidence from a battery of placebo tests, event study estimates, and specifications using Google Trends data to capture differences in treatment intensity underlines the robustness of our findings.
Political machinery: did robots swing the 2016 US presidential election?with Chinchih Chen and Carl Benedikt Frey, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 2018.
Abstract ↓ PDF Citation ↓
```
@article{Frey2018robots,
  author    = {Frey, Carl Benedikt and Berger, Thor and Chen, Chinchih},
  title     = {Political Machinery: Did Robots Swing the 2016 {US} Presidential Election?},
  journal   = {Oxford Review of Economic Policy},
  year      = {2018},
  volume    = {34},
  number    = {3},
  pages     = {418--442},
  doi       = {10.1093/oxrep/gry007}
}
```
We examine whether robots shaped the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election. Pitching technology against alternative explanations including offshoring and trade exposure, we document that support for Donald Trump was significantly higher in local labour markets more exposed to the adoption of robots. A counterfactual analysis shows that Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin would have swung in favour of Hillary Clinton if the exposure to robots had not increased in the immediate years leading up to the election.
Locomotives of local growth: The short- and long-term impact of railroads in Swedenwith Kerstin Enflo, Journal of Urban Economics, 2017.
Abstract ↓ PDF Citation ↓
```
@article{Berger2017railroads,
  author    = {Berger, Thor and Enflo, Kerstin},
  title     = {Locomotives of Local Growth: The Short- and Long-Term Impact of Railroads in {S}weden},
  journal   = {Journal of Urban Economics},
  year      = {2017},
  volume    = {98},
  pages     = {124--138},
  doi       = {10.1016/j.jue.2015.09.001}
}
```
This paper studies the impact of railroads on 150 years of urban growth in Sweden, identifying the short- and long-term effects of a first wave of railroad construction. Difference-in-differences and instrumental variable estimates show that towns that gained access experienced substantial relative increases in population, though such growth mainly reflected a reallocation of economic activity. Over the twentieth century, we find little evidence of convergence in town populations, despite the railroad network expanding further to connect nearly all towns. Evidence on historical investments and present-day factors is consistent with the idea that the transitory shock of the first railroads gave rise to path dependence in the location of economic activity.
Industrial renewal in the 21st century: evidence from US citieswith Carl Benedikt Frey, Regional Studies, 2017.
Abstract ↓ PDF Citation ↓
```
@article{Berger2017industrial,
  author    = {Berger, Thor and Frey, Carl Benedikt},
  title     = {Industrial Renewal in the 21st Century: Evidence from {US} Cities},
  journal   = {Regional Studies},
  year      = {2017},
  volume    = {51},
  number    = {3},
  pages     = {404--413},
  doi       = {10.1080/00343404.2015.1100288}
}
```
Where and why do new industries emerge? Using revisions of official industrial classifications, this paper documents the appearance of new industries in the US economy between 2000 and 2010 stemming directly from technological advances. Examining differences in new industry creation across cities, this paper shows that new industries mainly emerge in human capital abundant places and cities that specialize in industries that demand similar skills. Instrumental variables estimates that exploit the location of 19th-century land-grant colleges as an instrument for contemporary differences in human capital assigns a causal interpretation to these results.
Regional technological dynamism and noncompete clauses: Evidence from a natural experimentwith Carl Benedikt Frey, Journal of Regional Science, 2016.
Abstract ↓ PDF Citation ↓
```
@article{Berger2016noncompete,
  author    = {Berger, Thor and Frey, Carl Benedikt},
  title     = {Regional Technological Dynamism and Noncompete Clauses: Evidence from a Natural Experiment},
  journal   = {Journal of Regional Science},
  year      = {2017},
  volume    = {57},
  number    = {4},
  pages     = {655--668},
  doi       = {10.1111/jors.12305}
}
```
In this paper, we examine the causal impact of enforceable covenants not to compete (CNCs) on labor market matching and the technological dynamism of regions. Exploiting the fact that the Michigan Antitrust Reform Act (MARA) of 1985 inadvertently repealed Michigan's prohibition on CNC enforcement, we show that technical professionals in Michigan became increasingly likely to switch industry relative to similar workers in other U.S. states after the reform. Workers switching industries after the introduction of MARA also earned lower wages, implying that they shifted into technical fields where their skills from previous employment were less productive. Estimates further show that the technological dynamism of Michigan declined in tandem, as fewer workers shifted into new types of jobs associated with recent technological advances. These findings are consistent with the view that skilled professionals that are subject to CNCs are more likely to leave their field of work postemployment to avoid lawsuits.
Did the Computer Revolution shift the fortunes of US cities? Technology shocks and the geography of new jobswith Carl Benedikt Frey, Regional Science and Urban Economics, 2016.
Abstract ↓ PDF Citation ↓
```
@article{Berger2016computer,
  author    = {Berger, Thor and Frey, Carl Benedikt},
  title     = {Did the Computer Revolution Shift the Fortunes of {US} Cities? Technology Shocks and the Geography of New Jobs},
  journal   = {Regional Science and Urban Economics},
  year      = {2016},
  volume    = {57},
  pages     = {38--45},
  doi       = {10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2015.11.003}
}
```
We document a sharp reversal in the skill content of new jobs. While technological change was biased towards routine skills throughout the 1970s, new job titles mainly appeared in occupations requiring abstract skills after 1980. This reversal is reflected in the geography of new jobs: following the Computer Revolution, the creation of new jobs shifted towards cities with endowments of analytical and interactive skills. Our results suggest that the recent divergence of US cities can in part be explained by complementarities between new technologies and skill endowments.