My vacation rental has Why Nations Fail on the bookshelf, cementing its status as beach reading.

To test the mechanism, I scrape full membership directories for 20 local chambers. Comparing member counts to admin data on the total number of enterprises per city suggests an average membership rate of 15%—MASSIVE compared to most civil orgs. Local business is very organized!

To test the theory, I collect novel data on 11,000+ past and present local chambers in the U.S. from state corporate registries (thanks to @opencorporates.bsky.social ). I show that the number of U.S. municipalities and counties with their own chamber sharply increased over the 20th c.

I argue that the answer lies in the changing industrial makeup of U.S. localities over the 20th c. Gone are the days of the “industry town”—instead, the average U.S. county is home to a more diverse range of industries than ever before.

🚨 New working paper 🚨

In an era of political nationalization, here’s something interesting: locally organized business interest groups—eg “chambers of commerce”—are more popular than ever. Why is that?

The 🙏 doctrine

Perhaps the clearest messaging I’ve received on the effect of tariffs in a world of supply chains. Courtesy of a US company that makes…. pet hair cleaning products.

Apropos of nothing, thinking of Eisenhower’s assessment of conservatives who want to deregulate and cut social services.

TIL: Arrow’s impossibility theorem came out of his work on the theory of the firm!