The Value of Piped Water and Sewers: Evidence from 19th Century Chicago

We are grateful to Werner Troesken, who sparked the data collection underlying this paper before he passed away in 2018. We also gratefully acknowledge helpful comments and discussions with seminar participants at Brown, Buffalo, Case Western, George Washington, Georgetown, NBER SI (DAE and Urban), Oxford, Southern Methodist University, Syracuse, 2022 UEAs (North America and Europe), Wisconsin, and Yale, and with Caitlin Brett, Hoyt Bleakley, Michael Hahneman, Peter Hull, Jeffrey Lin, Ana Varela Varela, and Maisy Wong. We thank Thomas Carr for excellent research assistance. Any errors are our responsibility alone. Kitagawa gratefully acknowledges financial support from ERC grant (number 715940). Coury and Shertzer gratefully acknowledge the support of the National Science Foundation (SES-1918554) which funded much of this research. Turner gratefully acknowledges the support of a Kenen fellowship at Princeton University during some of the time this research was conducted. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

• February 4, 2022
• July 11, 2022