Research

The Renaissance era in Western Europe was marked by a flourishing of economic and cultural life that gave rise to numerous discoveries and inventions. This paper studies the role played by Greek migrants in this process. Using a newly constructed dataset on Greek migrants in Europe after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, I show that a Greek presence in the second half of the fifteenth century increased city growth in the sixteenth century. In terms of mechanisms, I find that a Greek presence increased the available knowledge stock in astronomy, mathematics, and medicine -- fields in which ancient Greek and Byzantine scholars were especially advanced. Finally, I document an increase in upper-tail human capital and inventions in these cities. My findings thus show the important role played by Greek migrants in disseminating scientific knowledge and the positive impact that Greek knowledge exerted on city growth in the early modern period.

This paper studies how the prehistoric geographic distribution of domesticable transport animal species has contributed to shaping differences in development. I identify the historical ranges of the ten animal species that are (1) suitable for domestication and (2) suitable for carrying loads. Based on these ranges, I create a measure of the prehistoric presence of domesticable transport animals around the world. The empirical analysis reveals a strong relationship between the historical presence of domesticable transport animals and the emergence of ancient long-distance trade routes and early forms of hierarchy. Historical access to domesticable transport animals also continued to matter in the long run: Pre-industrial ethnic groups living in regions historically home to domesticable transport animals were more involved in trade and had built more complex hierarchical structures. Moreover, these groups developed greater numerical skills, larger levels of labor specialization, and higher levels of class stratification, thus underscoring the broad cultural and developmental impacts exerted by historical access to domesticable transport animals.

A distinct feature of the Protestant Reformation was Martin Luther’s intentional use of German, rather than Latin, in his writings. This paper examines the reformers' reliance on the vernacular and its impact on the market for ideas. We document a significant increase in the printing of vernacular works after the start of the Reformation. The increased use of the vernacular expanded the ranks of authors, increased the supply of works from authors with a non-elite background, and broadened thematic coverage. Consequently, a much larger share of the populace could participate in the consumption, creation, and dissemination of printed information.

This paper studies the historical roots of vaccine hesitancy in the context of Germany. Using digitized data on the existence of naturopathic associations in Germany in the year 1900, we first show that counties with a large number of naturopathic associations in 1900 were disproportionally located in parts of East Germany. Furthermore, counties with a higher number of naturopathic associations in 1900 have significantly lower COVID-19 vaccination rates today. Our IV estimates suggest that the long-term effects of the naturopathic movement can explain about half of the East--West gap in COVID-19 vaccination rates.

The Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) aims to prevent so-called conflict diamonds -- diamonds that come from conflict zones -- from entering world markets. The scheme works by tracking diamonds and by limiting trade among KPCS members to certified diamonds. This paper studies the scheme's impact on armed conflict in Africa. We exploit grid-cell level variation in the propensity to extract alluvial diamonds, and compare grid cells with and without this propensity before and after the introduction of the KPCS in 2002. Our results show that the KPCS led to a permanent and significant reduction in armed conflict.

We provide evidence that income inequality across ethnicities reduces economic growth. This result is obtained based on a novel and comprehensive dataset of harmonized Gini indices on ethnic inequality for countries and sub-national units between 1992 and 2013. Our approach exploits differentials in nighttime lights (NTL) across ethnic homelands, using new techniques to harmonize NTL series across geographic regions and years to address concerns about spatial and temporal incomparability of satellite photographs. Our measures show that ethnic inequality is widespread across countries and has decreased over time. Our identification strategy exploits the artificialty of sub-national borders to construct instrumental variables for ethnic inequality. The negative effect of ethnic inequality is caused by increasing conflict and decreasing public goods provision.