Research

Recent Working Papers

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

• Meissner, C., Jacks, D. and Wolf. N. (2024): "Suez".

• 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

• F. Kersting and N. Wolf (forthcoming): "Die Protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Nationalismus", in Martin Lutz, Maren Freudenberg, Moritz Hinsch (Hg.) Handbuch Wirtschaft und Religion in Deutschland im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, De Gruyter Oldenbourg, forthcoming.

• Wolf, N. (forthcoming): "Zur Bauwirtschaft der klassischen Moderne: was lehrt das Beispiel GEHAG?", in Steffen Adam, Reinhard Wenzel (Hrsg.): 100 Jahre Gemeinnützige Heimstätten AG (GEHAG), Fachtagung am 13. April zum Solidarischen Wohnungsbau, Berlin: BeBra, forthcoming. 

• Hungerland, W.-F. and Wolf, N. (2024): "The Universe of Germany’s Foreign Trade prior to World War I", German Economic Review (forthcoming).

• Kersting, F. and Wolf, N. (2024): "On the Origins of National Identity. German Nation-Building after Napoleon", CEPR Discussion Paper 16314, Journal of Comparative Economics , Volume 52, Issue 2, June 2024, Pages 463-477. 

• 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

• "On the origins of national identity: German nation-building after Napoleon" (may 2024), post at VOXEU.org

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

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

• 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