Research

Recent Working Papers

• Ciccarelli, C. and Wolf, N. (2024): "Conquering Nature. How the Gotthardt Tunnel changed the European Economy", mimeo, Humboldt University Berlin.

• Hungerland, W-F. and Wolf, N. (2024) "The Universe of Germany's Foreign Trade prior to World War I", mimeo, under review.

• Fritzsche, M. and Wolf, N. (2023) "Fickle Fossils. Economic Growth, Coal and the European Oil Invasion, 1900-2015", CEPR Discussion Paper 18635.

• Huning, T.  and Wolf, N. (2023): "How Britain Unified Germany: The Geoeconomics of Location and Trade Routes", CEPR Discussion Paper 13634, update July 2023, R&R with The Journal of Economic History.

Recent Publications

• Kersting, F. and Wolf, N. (2024): "On the Origins of National Identity. German Nation-Building after Napoleon", CEPR Discussion Paper 16314, update Sept 2022, Journal of Comparative Economics (forthcoming). 

• Bartels, C., Kersting, F. and Wolf, N. (2024): "Testing Marx. Capital Accumulation, Income Inequality, and Socialism in Late Nineteenth-Century Germany", Review of Economics and Statistics (forthcoming),  CEPR Discussion Paper 17925.

• Pfister, U. and Wolf N. (eds., 2023) An Economic History of the First German Unification: State Formation and Economic Development in a European Perspective, Routledge, 2023. Book review by Marvin Suesse (EcHR 2024).

• Lampe, M. and Wolf, N. (2022): "Binnenhandel und Außenhandel", in: Thomas Rahlf (ed.): Deutschland in Daten. Zeitreihen zur Historischen Statistik. Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung, Bonn, 2022. 

• Wolf, N. (2022): "Zahlungsbilanz", in: Thomas Rahlf (ed.): Deutschland in Daten. Zeitreihen zur Historischen Statistik. Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung, Bonn, 2022. 

• Hungerland, Wolf-Fabian and Wolf, N. (2022): "The panopticon of Germany’ s foreign trade, 1880 – 1913. New facts on the first globalization", European Review of Economic History , Vol. 26, Issue 4, November 2022, pp. 479–507.

• Ulrich Pfister, Jan Hesse, Mark Spoerer and Nikolaus Wolf (eds. 2021). "Deutschland 1871. Die Nationalstaatsbildung und der Weg in die moderne Wirtschaft", Mohr Siebeck (2021). 

• Caruana Galicia, P., Okubo, T. and Wolf, N. (2021): "Underlying Sources of Growth. First and Second Nature Geography.", in Broadberry and Fukao (eds.), The Cambridge Economic History of the Modern World, Vol. 2: 1870 to the Present, Cambridge University Press (June 2021). 

• Roses, J. R. and Wolf, N. (2021): "Regional growth and inequality in the long-run: Europe, 1900–2015", Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Vol. 37, No. 1, 2021, pp. 17–48. 

• Kersting, F., Wohnsiedler, I., and Wolf, N. (2020): "Weber Revisited: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Nationalism", Web Appendix, The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 80, No. 3 (September), pp. 710-745, Online Appendix.

• Wolf, N. and Suesse M. (2020): "Rural Transformation, Inequality and the Origins of Micro-Finance", Journal of Development Economics, Vol. 143 (March), pp. xyz, Online Appendix.

More Publications (selected)

• Roses, J. R. and Wolf, N. (eds), The Economic Development of Europe's Regions: A Quantitative History Since 1900 (Routledge Explorations in Economic History), Routledge (2019). 

• Ahlfeldt, G., Redding, S., Sturm, D. and Wolf, N. (2015): “The Economics of Density: Evidence from the Berlin Wall”, Econometrica, Volume 83 (6), pp. 2127-2189. 

• Caruana Galizia, P. and Wolf. N. (2015), “Bombs, Homes and Jobs: Revisiting the Oswald Hypothesis for Germany”, , Economics Letters, Volume 135, pp. 65-68. 

• Wolf, N. (2014), Kurze Geschichte der Weltwirtschaft, APUZ 1-3/2014, Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung.

• Wolf, N. (2010), "Europe's Great Depression - Coordination Failure after the First World War", Oxford Review of Economic Policy 26(3), pp. 339-369. 

• Wolf, N. (2009), “Was Germany ever united? Evidence from Intra- and International Trade, 1885-1933”, The Journal of Economic History 69 (3), pp. 846-881. 

All my Publications at Google Scholar, Ideas/ RePEc

In the Media

• "Testing Marx" (August 2023), post at VOXEU.org

• "Can the North Sea become Europe’s new economic powerhouse?", (The Economist, Jan 1st 2023).

• "Gerade addieren sich mehrere Schocks", Interview on Lastenausgleich as example for wealth redistribution, (Berliner Zeitung, Nr. 224, Montag, 26. September 2022), joint with Thilo Albers.

• Interview on History of the Berlin Wall, Voice of Islam (August 2021), [starts at 1.31.19]

• "Wirtschaftsfaktor Religion", FAZ (April 2021)

• "Deutschland in der Ersten Globalisierung", ZBW Wirtschaftsdienst (April 2021)

• "Germany's Regional Development: 30-150 Years Since Unification", Economic History Podcast (Dec 2020)

• "Levelling up is easier in a world of remote work", Financial Times, (17 Nov 2020)

• "Did Border controls help? (Oct 2020)", Blog at BSE Insights 

• "Geschichte der Globalisierung in der Neuzeit" (Sept 2020), Interview mit Andreas Beckmann, Deutschlandfunk

• "COVID-19 across European Regions: The Role of Border Controls" (Sept 2020), Interview at Faculti.net

• "Die Protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Nationalismus" (Sept 2020), Beitrag auf Ökonomenstimme.org

• "Weber Revisited: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Nationalism" (July 2020), post at VOXEU.org

• "The Origins of Microfinance" (January 2020), post at VOXEU.org