Research
Work in Progress
Job Market Paper
Worker Displacement and Labor Market Success: Evidence from Forced Labor Conscription during WWII
Disruptions of labor market trajectories have lasting effects on later economic success. Displacement due to forced labor conscription is a disruption that remains understudied despite its continued prevalence in contemporary contexts. I investigate the consequences of exposure to forced labor conscription for individuals' long-term labor market outcomes. I exploit the fact that cohorts of Dutch civilians faced a differential probability of temporary labor coercion in Nazi Germany during WWII in a Regression Discontinuity Design. Using Dutch census data from 1971, I find that conscripted individuals have lower education, income, and probability of employment. Analyzing heterogeneous effects, I find that exposure to harsher conditions in Germany is associated with reduced labor force participation and poorer health. My findings suggest that the negative impact on labor force participation is mitigated when individuals are conscripted to work in sectors that are also present in the Netherlands, which enhances their ability to reintegrate into the workforce.
Rewriting the Social Contract: Elite Response to Labor Unrest
with Erik Hornung and Noam Yuchtman
We study how autocratic elites modify the social contract in response to social unrest. Elites in early 20th-century Prussia were legitimized through unequal voting rights but faced mounting threats of mass mobilization. Using labor strikes as a proxy for mobilization, we find that locations with higher revolutionary pressure witnessed increased spending on redistributive public goods, public bourgeois support for suffrage reform, and parliamentary support for franchise extension – conditional on bourgeois support. This correlational evidence is bolstered with placebo checks and a shift-share instrumental variable approach that relates industry-specific international commodity price changes to Prussian regions based on industry exposure.
Missing Men and Women's Fight for the Vote
with Barbara Boelmann
In this paper, we investigate whether power vacuums lead to the empowerment of marginalized groups by analyzing women's empowerment in Germany during World War I. Specifically, we study whether the large share of men missing during the war led to an increase in women's fight for the vote. We exploit exogenous variation in the drafting probability arising from regional differences in recruitment responsibility and link it to the number of local suffragette clubs lobbying for women's right to vote. Our results suggest that women were more likely to organize in local suffragette clubs when more men were missing during the war. We continue by investigating spillovers of women's empowerment along two dimensions. First, we show that empowerment translated into higher political participation once female voting rights were introduced. Second, we use data on employment by industry and gender during World War I to show that missing men also led to a growing importance of women in the economic sphere.
Forced Melting Pot: The Impact of Exposure to Foreigners on Long-Term Economic Relations
with Ann-Kristin Becker
This paper investigates whether exposure to foreigners can influence long-term economic relationships. We explore this question within the context of forced labor in Germany during World War II. Exploiting the quasi-random distribution of foreign workers across German counties – a distribution not determined by prior migration patterns or existing economic ties – we identify the impact of temporary exposure to foreign nationals on future economic ties. We find that a greater presence of foreign workers of a given nationality increases the likelihood of town twinning and firm links between German counties and the workers' countries of origin after the war, with these effects persisting to the present. The effect is more pronounced in counties with larger agricultural and service sectors, where foreign workers had more interactions with local residents compared to those in the industrial sector. These findings suggest that contact with foreigners, even under involuntary conditions, can foster long-term economic and social collaboration.