Historical Antisemitism, Ethnic Specialization, and Financial Development

Abstract

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IQ, Expectations, and Choice

“…We thus follow D 'Acunto, Hoang, and Weber (2019) and create a qualitative measure of inflation expectations-a dummy variable that equals 1 when a household expects inflation to increase over the following 12 months relative to the previous 12 months. D' Acunto et al (2019) show that this qualitative measure tracks closely ex-post inflation rates even for individuals with low levels of sophistication. If low-IQ individuals were aware of their biases and understood intertemporal substitution, we would expect that at least their accurate qualitative inflation expectations would be associated with their purchasing plans.…”

“…The last channel we consider is respondents' ability to map news about inflation into optimal economic decisions in scenario analyses. We find that low-IQ individuals have a lower ability to propose meaningful choices in these scenarios, whereas high-IQ individuals are more likely to choose the options that would arise in a standard dynamic 2 We thank Andrei Shleifer for inspiring this analysis.…”

“…We thus fielded a survey instrument on Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) to administer ad-hoc tests for a set of non-mutually-exclusive potential channels. 2 This controlled environment is also important because it allows us to recruit both men and women from a different population than Finns, which helps assess whether the facts we document are likely to generalize across genders and across space.…”

Religion, Division of Labor, and Conflict: Anti-Semitism in Germany over 600 Years

“…The main implication was that "the combination of circumstances made serving as moneylenders and pawnbrokers the main occupation of Jews in Germany" (from the entry "Germany" in Encyclopedia Judaica). 8 Following the Protestant Reformation in 1517, the German lands split between Catholics and Protestants (see Becker and Woessmann 2009). 9 Protestant views on usury were less restrictive, and Protestant moneylending was allowed (or at least tolerated) (see Nelson 1969).…”

“…We use these data to document that pogroms, the killings of Jews and expulsions of Jewish 7 Canon 67 of the Lateran Council states, "Jews may not charge extortionate interest," but they may charge interest. 8 From the entry "Germany" in the Encyclopedia Judaica (edited by Cecil Roth and Geoffrey Wigoder): "[In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries], the city guilds forced the Jews out of the trades and the regular channels of commerce; this coincided with the stricter appliance of the church ban on usury […]." Earlier, Israel Abrahams (1896) wrote that "when the medieval Jews devoted themselves largely to commerce and moneylending, they were not obeying a natural taste nor a special instinct but were led to these pursuits by the force of the circumstances, by exclusive laws, and by the express desire of kings and people."…”