New technologies tend to be adopted slowly and – even after being adopted – take time to be reflected in higher aggregate productivity. One prominent explanation for these patterns is the need to reorganize production, which often goes hand-in-hand with major technological breakthroughs. We study a unique setting that allows us to examine the empirical relevance of this explanation: the adoption of mechanized cotton spinning during the First Industrial Revolution in France. The new technology required reorganizing production by moving workers from their homes to the newly-formed factories. Using a novel hand-collected plant-level dataset from French archival sources, we show that productivity growth in mechanized cotton spinning was driven by the disappearance of plants in the lower tail – in contrast to other sectors that did not need to reorganize when new technologies were introduced. We provide evidence that this was driven by organizational challenges such as developing optimal plant layout. A process of ‘trial and error’ led to initially low and widely dispersed productivity, and – in the subsequent decades – to high productivity growth as knowledge diffused through the economy and new entrants adopted improved methods of organizing production.

We modify the 1983 Diamond and Dybvig model so that banks offer liquidity services to depositors, raise equity funding, make risky loans, and invest in safe, liquid assets. Banks monitor borrowers to ensure that they repay loans and they are susceptible to depositor runs. We model the run decision by solving a novel global game. Relative to a social planner, banks opt for a more deposit-intensive capital structure, their assets may be more or less lending intensive, and the level of lending may be higher or lower. Correcting these three distortions requires a package of three regulations.

Globally, access to preschool has increased dramatically but its quality is often poor. We evaluate two interventions aimed at improving the quality of public preschools in Colombia. The first, designed by the government and rolled-out nationwide, provided preschools with significant extra funding, mainly earmarked for hiring teaching assistants (TAs). The second, for a small additional cost, also offered training for existing teachers. We show that the first intervention did not improve child development, while the second led to significant improvements in children’s cognitive development, especially for those from more disadvantaged backgrounds. We argue these dramatic differences can be explained by the two interventions having different impacts on teachers’ behavior. The first led teachers to reduce the time they spent in the classroom, including on learning activities. The addition of the training offset this adverse effect of TA provision on teachers’ learning activities and improved the quality of teaching.