Main Published Papers
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Can infrastructure investment win "hearts and minds"? We analyze a famous case in the early stages of dictatorship—the building of the motorway network in Nazi Germany. The Autobahn was one of the most important projects of the Hitler government. It was intended to reduce unemployment, and was widely used for propaganda purposes. We examine its role in increasing support for the NS regime by analyzing new data on motorway construction and the 1934 plebiscite, which gave Hitler great powers as head of state. Our results suggest that road building was highly effective, reducing opposition to the nascent Nazi regime.
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New Deal, New Patriots: How 1930s Government Spending Boosted Patriotism during WW II
We demonstrate an important complementarity between patriotism and public good provision. After 1933, the New Deal led to an unprecedented expansion of the US federal government's role. Those who benefited from social spending were markedly more patriotic during WW II: they bought more war bonds, volunteered more and, as soldiers, won more medals. This pattern was new -- WW I volunteering did not show the same geography of patriotism. We match military service records with the 1940 census to show that this pattern holds at the individual level.
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How is collective memory formed and when does it impact behavior? During World War II, German troops occupying Greece carried out numerous massacres, often as reprisals for partisan attacks. During the recent Greek sovereign debt crisis, political conflict erupted between the German and Greek governments; German car sales in Greece declined. Reductions were greatest in areas affected by German reprisals.
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Financial Crises and Political Radicalization: How Failing Banks Paved Hitler's Path to Power
Do financial crises radicalize voters? We study Germany's 1931 banking crisis, collecting new data on bank branches and firm-bank connections. Exploiting cross-sectional variation in pre-crisis exposure to the bank at the center of the crisis, we show that Nazi votes surged in locations more affected by its failure.
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Killer Incentives: Status Competition and Pilot Performance during World War II
Using newly-collected data on death rates and aerial victories of more than 5,000 German fighter pilots during World War II, we examine the effects of public recognition on performance and risk-taking. When a particular pilot is honored publicly, both the victory rate and the death rate of his former peers increase.
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Sweet Diversity: Colonial Goods and the Welfare Gains from Global Trade after 1492
When did overseas trade start to matter for living standards? Traditional real-wage indices suggest that living standards in Europe stagnated before 1800. In this paper, we argue that welfare may have actually risen substantially, but surreptitiously, because of an influx of new goods.
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The Long Run Effects of Religious Persecution: Evidence from the Spanish Inquisition
Religious persecution is common in many countries around the globe. There is little evidence on its long-term effects. We collect new data from all across Spain, using information from over 67,000 trials held by the Spanish Inquisition between 1480 and 1820.
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Rage Against the Machines: Labor-Saving Technology and Unrest in Industrializing England
Can new technology cause social instability and unrest? We examine the Captain Swing riots in 1830s England. Newly-collected data on threshing machine adoption shows that new technology was associated with both higher unemployment and more riots.
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Bowling for Fascism: Social Capital and the Rise of the Nazi Party
Social capital is often associated with desirable political and economic outcomes. This paper contributes to a growing literature on its "dark side". We examine the role of social capital in the downfall of democracy in interwar Germany.
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Leverage and Beliefs: Personal Experience and Risk Taking in Margin Lending
What determines risk-bearing capacity and the amount of leverage in financial markets? Using unique archival data on collateralized lending, we show that personal experience can affect individual risk-taking and aggregate leverage.
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Taught to Hate: Nazi Indoctrination and Anti-Semitic Beliefs in Germany
Attempts at modifying public opinions, attitudes, and beliefs range from advertising and schooling to "brainwashing". Their effectiveness is highly controversial. In this paper, we use survey data to show that Nazi indoctrination was highly effective.
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State Capacity and Military Conflict
In 1500, Europe was composed of hundreds of statelets and principalities. By 1800, Europe had consolidated into a handful of powerful, centralized nation states. We build a model that simultaneously explains both the emergence of capable states and growing divergence between European powers.
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Numeracy and the Impact of High Food Prices in Industrializing Britain, 1780-1850
Using census-based data on the ability to recall one's age, we show that low levels of nutrition impaired numeracy in industrializing England, 1780 to 1850.
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How the West 'Invented' Fertility Restriction
We analyze the rise of the first socio-economic institution in history that limited fertility long before the Demographic Transition. The "European Marriage Pattern" raised the marriage age of women and ensured that many remained celibate.
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The Three Horsemen of Riches: Plague, War and Urbanization in Early Modern Europe
How did Europe escape the Iron Law of Wages? We construct a simple Malthusian model with two sectors and multiple steady states, and use it to explain why European per capita incomes and urbanization rates increased during the period 1350-1700.
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Persecution Perpetuated: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Semitic Violence in Nazi Germany
How persistent are cultural traits? Using data on anti-Semitism in Germany, we find local continuity over 600 years. Jews were often blamed when the Black Death killed at least a third of Europe's population during 1348-50.
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Lending to the Borrower from Hell: Debt and Default in the Age of Philip II, 1556-1598
What sustained borrowing without third-party enforcement in the early days of sovereign lending? Philip II of Spain accumulated towering debts while stopping all payments to his lenders four times. How could the sovereign borrow much and default often?
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Serial Defaults, Serial Profits: Returns to Sovereign Lending in Habsburg Spain, 1566-1600
Philip II of Spain accumulated debts equivalent to 60% of GDP. He also defaulted four times on his short-term loans. Contrary to a common view, we show that lending to the king was profitable even under worst-case scenario assumptions.
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Betting on Hitler: The Value of Political Connections in Nazi Germany
This paper examines the value of connections between German industry and the Nazi movement in early 1933. Firms supporting the Nazi movement experienced unusually high returns, outperforming unconnected ones by 5% to 8%.
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This article studies the effects of interest rate restrictions on loan allocation. The British government tightened the usury laws in 1714, reducing the maximum permissible interest rate from 6% to 5%.
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Why did England industrialize first? And why was Europe ahead of the rest of the world? We present a probabilistic two-sector model where the initial escape from Malthusian constraints depends on the demographic regime.
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This paper presents a case study of a well-informed investor in the South Sea bubble. We argue that Hoare's Bank knew that a bubble was in progress and nonetheless invested in the stock: it was profitable to "ride the bubble."
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With a Bang, Not a Whimper: Pricking Germany's "Stockmarket Bubble" in 1927
In May 1927, the German central bank intervened indirectly to reduce lending to equity investors. The crash that followed ended the only stock market boom during Germany's relative stabilization 1924-28.
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Factor Prices and Productivity Growth during the British Industrial Revolution
This paper presents new estimates of total factor productivity growth in Britain for the period 1770-1860. We use the dual technique and argue that the estimates we derive from factor prices are of similar quality to quantity-based calculations.
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Human Capital, Equipment Investment, and Industrialization
This paper constructs simple models in which industrialization is driven by human capital accumulation. Industrialization can explain the robust correlation between equipment investment and growth in developing countries.
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Time and Work in Eighteenth Century London
Witnesses' accounts are used to analyze changes in working hours between 1750 and 1800. The number of annual working hours changed rapidly between the middle and the end of the eighteenth century.