Work in Progress
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 Demand for Political Representation
with Barbara Boelmann
In this paper, we study the role of agency in shaping demand for political representation of under-represented groups. Specifically, we examine how the increase in German women’s agency induced by World War I affected their demand for the franchise. We proxy increases in agency by the local degree of missing men. To make demand for political representation measurable, we rely on a newly digitized panel dataset of the universe of German suffragette clubs. For identification, we exploit exogenous variation in the drafting probability arising from regional differences in recruitment responsibility. Our results suggest that women were more likely to keep open local suffragette clubs in regions with higher male absences during the war. We provide suggestive evidence that women in highly visible leadership roles were an important contributing factor due to decreasing the social costs associated with fighting for the vote. In addition, we show that agency translated to higher political participation among women once female voting rights were introduced, suggesting lasting changes in demand for political representation.
The Forced Melting Pot: Short-term contact and International Cooperation
with Ann-Kristin Becker
This paper examines whether short-term exposure to foreign nationals fosters long-term international cooperation. We explore this question within the context of forced labor in Germany during World War II, exploiting that the distribution of foreign workers across German counties was not determined by prior migration patterns or existing ties. Using a gravity model, we find that a greater presence of foreign workers of a given nationality increases the number of firm links between German counties and the workers' countries of origin in the postwar period. However, this effect persists only when ties are institutionalized via town twinnings. These findings show that even coercive, short-term contact can foster lasting international cooperation when embedded in formal institutions.