Seeking to reach the unbanked, the US Postal Savings System provided a federally insured savings alternative to traditional banks. Using novel data sets on postal deposits, demographic characteristics, and banks, we study how and by whom the system was used. We find the program was initially used by nonfarming immigrant populations for short-term saving, then as a safe haven during the Great Depression, and finally as long-term investments for the wealthy during the 1940s. Postal Savings was only a partial substitute for traditional banks, as locations with banks often still heavily used Postal Savings.
Any opinions and conclusions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Census Bureau not those of the National Bureau of Economic Research. The research in this paper does not use any confidential Census Bureau data.NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.
U.S. universities have experienced a shift in research funding away from federal and towards private industry sources. This paper evaluates whether the source of funding -federal or private industry -is relevant for commercialization of research outputs. We link person-level grant data from 22 universities to patent and career outcomes (including IRS W-2 records). To identify a causal effect, we exploit individual-level variation in exposure to narrow federal R&D programs stemming from pre-existing field specialization. We instrument for the researcher's funding sources with aggregate supply shocks to federal funding within these narrow fields. The results show that a higher share of federal funding reduces patenting and the chances of joining an incumbent firm, while increasing the chances of high-tech entrepreneurship and of remaining employed in academia. A decline in the federal share of funding is offset by an increase in the private share of funding, which has opposite effects. We conclude that the incentives of private funders to appropriate research outputs have important implications for the trajectory of university researcher careers and intellectual property.
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