Persistence of Population Shocks: Evidence from the Occupation of West Germany after World War II

Schumann, Abel

doi:10.1257/app.6.3.189

Cited by 48 publications

(77 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…Areas geographically close to each other were arguably more similar before the political separation. In the spatial RD design the running variable is two-dimensional; as recommended by Imbens and Zajonc (2011), we collapse it to one dimension, thus using distance from the border as our running variable (Black, 1999;Lalive, 2008;Schumann, 2014). Specifically, we measure the Euclidean distance between the centroid of each respondent's county of residence and the East-West German border (Fig.…”

Section: Iiic Econometric Model and Identificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…4 However a simple comparison of attitudes between the two groups may be biased by unobserved heterogeneity (before the separation). To infer the extent to which the two politico-economic regimes influenced the attitudes of their citizens, we therefore build on the spatial regression discontinuity framework (Black, 1999;Lalive, 2008;Dell, 2010;Schumann, 2014). The goal is to compare, before reunification had been completed, only women who had lived close to the East-West border, on the assumption that attitudes in these areas had been similar before separation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Politico-Economic Regimes and Attitudes: Female Workers under State Socialism

Campa

Serafinelli

2019

The Review of Economics and Statistics

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This paper investigates the extent to which attitudes are affected by political regimes and government policies. We focus on female attitudes toward work and gender-role attitudes in the population at large, which have been shown to have significant effects on labor market outcomes. We exploit the imposition of state-socialist regimes across Central and Eastern Europe, and their efforts to promote women's economic inclusion, for both instrumental and ideological reasons, presenting evidence from two different datasets. First, we take advantage of the German partition into East and West after 1945 and unique access to restricted information on place of residence to implement a spatial regression discontinuity design. We find more positive attitudes toward work in the sample of East German women. We also find evidence that increased female access to higher education and fulltime employment, arguably two of the very few positive aspects of living under state-socialism, may have served as channels for regime influence. Second, we employ a difference-indifferences strategy that compares attitudes formed in Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) and Western European Countries (WECs), before and after the imposition of state socialism in CEECs. Gender-role attitudes formed in CEECs during the state socialist period appear to be significantly less traditional than those formed in WECs. [Z10, P51, J16]

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Section: Iiic Econometric Model and Identificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Politico-Economic Regimes and Attitudes: Female Workers under State Socialism

Campa

Serafinelli

2019

The Review of Economics and Statistics

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“…Likewise, Redfearn (2009) finds that employment density in Los Angeles exhibited a high degree of stability over the last century. Examining the case of Germany, Bosker, Brakman, Garretsen andSchramm (2007, 2008) and Schumann (2014) all find that temporary shocks associated with World War II had persistent effects on the distribution of population, consistent with the existence of multiple equilibria.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 70%

Trade Competition and Migration: Evidence from the Quartz Crisis

Twinam¹

2020

Preprint

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Agglomeration economies and clustering effects are a key driver of urban growth. They can also be a source of vulnerability when cities and regions specialize in exportintensive industries. Foreign competition, exchange rate movements, macroeconomic volatility, and technological change are all potential threats to exporters, and shocks to these industries can have long-run impacts on population size and growth. In this paper, I study an unusual confluence of all four of these trade shocks: The quartz crisis in Switzerland, which devastated the globally-dominant Swiss watch industry in the 1970s. I document the geographic agglomeration pattern of the industry and the impact of the crisis on exports, employment, and wages. Using a differences-in-differences strategy, I show that this series of trade shocks led to a large and rapid loss of population in affected areas, and a long-run change in growth patterns. I explore the mechanisms behind this population change, including the role of manufacturing employment and immigration. I discuss the implications of these results for theories of urban growth, and contrast them with recent work on the China shock in Europe and the United States.

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“…In this boundary discontinuity design (BDD), the Limes acts as two-dimensional cutoff separating treated and non-treated areas. By adopting this strategy the paper adds to a growing literature that exploits geographical or political discontinuities in space to identify causal effects of certain variables on economic outcomes (e.g., Dell 2010, Grosfeld and Zhuravskaya 2015, Michalopolous and Papaioannou 2014, Schumann 2014 The results indicate that indeed, economic development is significantly higher in the historically Roman parts of Germany. Furthermore, I can show that the Roman road network largely persisted until today, that the formerly Roman parts of Germany have a denser road network and that this denser road network is associated with better economic development.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Long Shadow of History. Roman Legacy and Economic Development -- Evidence from the German Limes

Wahl

2015

SSRN Journal

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This paper contributes to the understanding of the long-run consequences of Roman rule on economic development. In ancient times, the area of contemporary Germany was divided into a Roman and non-Roman part. The study uses this division to test whether the formerly Roman part of Germany show a higher nightlight luminosity than the non-Roman part. This is done by using the Limes wall as geographical discontinuity in a regression discontinuity design framework. The results indicate that economic development-as measured by luminosity-is indeed significantly and robustly larger in the formerly Roman parts of Germany. The study identifies the persistence of the Roman road network until the present as an important factor causing this development advantage of the formerly Roman part of Germany both by fostering city growth and by allowing for a denser road network.

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Persistence of Population Shocks: Evidence from the Occupation of West Germany after World War II

Cited by 48 publications

References 17 publications

Politico-Economic Regimes and Attitudes: Female Workers under State Socialism

Politico-Economic Regimes and Attitudes: Female Workers under State Socialism

Trade Competition and Migration: Evidence from the Quartz Crisis

The Long Shadow of History. Roman Legacy and Economic Development -- Evidence from the German Limes

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