ASSAF Y. ABRAHAM
PhD Candidate in Economics
University of Mannheim
Economic History · Economic Geography · Labor Economics
I study how historical shocks shape the geography of economic activity and long-run economic outcomes. My research combines historical data and empirical methods to examine industrialization, migration, and intergenerational mobility.
You can find my CV here.
You can find my Job Market Paper here.
I am on the 2026/2027 Job Market
assaf.abraham@uni-mannheim.de
Working Papers
One Hundred Years of Manufacturing: Long-run Consequences of the Indiana Gas Boom (Job Market Paper)
[EHS Centenary Conference Highlight]
Abstract: I examine the long-run consequences of a temporary, localized energy boom on local manufacturing development. Exploiting the 1886 discovery of natural gas in eastern Indiana, I use decadal U.S. census data on manufacturing activity to document how fifteen years of cheap natural gas spurred manufacturing growth in the region that persisted for nearly a century—despite the gas supply’s collapse in 1901. Comparing gas-rich counties with similar non-gas counties, I show that gas counties experienced both immediate and sustained manufacturing growth. Initially driven by glass and iron industries, this growth survived the collapse of gas supply, and later expanded to machinery and automobiles, indicating the presence of agglomeration forces in manufacturing that offset the loss of the initial advantage. This early industrial boom in the gas region was driven by a unique geological circumstance that complicated the transportation of gas to distant markets and pushed gas producers to attract manufacturers to the region with offers of cheap energy. To underscore the importance of this transportability constraint, I contrast Indiana with the Appalachian gas region, which faced no such limitations and exported most of its gas to distant urban markets. Appalachian gas counties experienced only modest excess manufacturing growth. The comparison highlights that even a temporary resource boom, when used as an input in local production, can create enduring advantages for local manufacturing industries.
Anatomy of Structural Change: Incumbents and Newcomers in the Indiana Gas Boom
Abstract: Structural change in agricultural regions is often understood as workers moving out of farming into expanding nonagricultural sectors. But when manufacturing arrives, do incumbent families move into the expanding sectors themselves, do they leave and get replaced by newcomers, or do they remain in the region, largely in their existing occupations, while newcomers fill the new jobs? I distinguish these processes using the 1886–1901 Indiana Gas Boom, when the discovery of cheap natural gas brought rapid manufacturing growth to predominantly agricultural counties, and compare gasfield counties with comparable counties outside the field. Linking the 1880 and 1900 complete-count censuses, I trace workers in the expanding sectors back to where they or their families lived before the boom, and follow pre-boom residents and their sons forward. About 74 percent of gas-induced nonagricultural employment growth came from workers originating outside the county, compared with only 20 percent from incumbent families. Younger cohorts supplied most of the expansion, but most of their contribution came from workers originating outside the county. Most outside-origin workers came from rural areas, yet fewer than half had agricultural backgrounds. Rather than displacing incumbent families, the boom increased their likelihood of staying, though relatively few entered the expanding sectors. Local industrialization happened around, rather than through, the incumbent population.
Works in Progress
Intergenerational Economic Recovery after Catastrophic Loss: Evidence from Holocaust Survivors in the United States
joint with Avraham Ebenstein, Yael Mishli, and Giora Zwilling
We use the extraordinary disruption caused by the Holocaust to study how socioeconomic status persists across generations when the usual channels of transmitting advantage—human and physical capital, social networks, and social standing—have been largely destroyed. We focus on Jewish Holocaust survivors who immigrated to the United States and their descendants. By linking individual-level records from the Arolsen Archives to U.S. Census and administrative data, we aim to trace survivors' economic recovery across generations and examine whether and how quickly their outcomes converged toward those of other U.S. populations. In particular, we ask whether children's outcomes are closer to the socioeconomic positions their parents might have reached absent the Holocaust, or to the much lower positions they actually occupied afterward.
Early Industrialization and the Resource Transportability Curse: Evidence from the Illinois Coal-Basin
A growing literature documents a long-run reversal of fortunes in early industrial regions, suggesting that early industrialization itself may have contributed to their subsequent decline. I argue that this interpretation may conflate two opposing effects of coal. Initially, when transport costs were high, proximity to coal gave local manufacturers a production-cost advantage, encouraging industrial growth that could persist through agglomeration forces. Later, as transport costs fell, coal could increasingly be sold to distant markets, giving rise to extraction economies that could crowd out manufacturing and generate resource-curse dynamics. These two forces suggest three distinct growth paths. Regions that benefited from an early manufacturing advantage but did not subsequently develop a large extraction economy should perform best; regions that experienced both should do worse; and regions that developed an extraction economy without an earlier manufacturing advantage should perform worst. I examine the distinction between the latter two groups using the Illinois Coal Basin, where coal deposits are shallow along the edges but become progressively deeper toward the center. Coal mining began early along the edges, when proximity to coal offered a manufacturing advantage, but became feasible in the center only in the late nineteenth century, when mining technology improved and coal was more easily transported to distant markets. This variation in the timing of coal extraction allows me to distinguish the long-run effects of an early manufacturing advantage from those of a later extraction economy.
Other Academic Activity
Commissioned book review: At Home in the Petromodern Paradox: Landscape and Community in the Bakken Boom (Business History, February 2027)
Selected Presentations
Frontiers in Economics Conference for Israeli Economists Abroad, October 2026, Tel Aviv
British Academy of Management (BAM) Annual Conference, September 2026, Royal Holloway, University of London
53rd Annual Conference of the European Association for Research in Industrial Economics (EARIE), August 2026, University of Mannheim
Energy, Sustainability and Economic History Workshop, June 2026, Pamplona, Spain
14th Mannheim Conference on Energy and the Environment, May 2026, ZEW, Mannheim
Economic History Society Annual Conference 2026, April 2026, London
Schumpeter@100: Firm Dynamics, Growth, and Heterogeneity, February 2026, Bonn
Seminar presentation at Université libre de Bruxelles, November 2025, Brussels
VfS Annual Conference 2025, September 2025, Cologne
Economic History Association Annual Meeting 2025, September 2025, Philadelphia (poster)
PhD Workshop in Quantitative Economic History, June 2025, Belfast
3rd Essex PhD Conference in Applied Economics, March 2025, Colchester