Research

Abstract: This paper examines how exposure to successful democratic institutions influences subsequent electoral support for constitutional order. It leverages a historical quasi-experimental setting: the 1864 Zemstvo reform, which introduced spatial variation within the Russian Empire in access to democratic institutions. The reform established local self-governments, allowing various social groups, including former serfs, to participate in local elections and elect officials to local assemblies. Additionally, Zemstvo institutions played a key role in expanding public goods provision, such as primary schooling and healthcare. Using population census data, the paper exploits variation across cohorts over time, demonstrating that those exposed to the reform experienced significant gains in human capital and occupational choice. By employing a spatial regression discontinuity design and analyzing the results of the 1917 Constitutional Assembly Elections, the paper shows that the literate population in Zemstvo regions, who benefited from public goods provision, increased electoral support for liberal parties (Constitutional Democrats). The findings highlight the mutually reinforcing relationship between support for liberal democracy and economic progress, which benefits broad segments of the population. 

Abstract: This paper examines the economic effects of German settlers on Imperial Russia’s transition to advanced industrialization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Between 1763 and 1860, thousands of German migrants came to the country’s frontier regions, drawn by a state-sponsored settlement policy. Using accidental elements in German migration induced by policy, the paper demonstrates that the migrants generated significant long-term benefits in their regions through improved schooling infrastructure and increased literacy among the non-German population. The paper shows that educational improvements translated into higher growth of technologically advanced industries and increased the share of skillful occupations.

Abstract: Cultural norms play a pivotal role in shaping how societies respond to crises. This study examines the causal effect of ethnic-specific gender norms on gender-biased mortality during resource shocks. Studying the 1891-1892 Russian famine, we compare cohorts born before and after the famine in districts differentially affected by the famine and with diverse gender norms. Our findings reveal that areas where women were depicted more negatively suffered a more skewed sex ratio favouring male survival. Our empirical exercise further stresses the importance of the cultural channel in driving these results and emphasizes the role of agency in survival outcomes. This study sheds light on the profound influence of cultural norms on survival-relevant decisions during crises, pointing at culturally ingrained channels of discrimination.

Abstract: The paper evaluates the long-run impact of charity nurseries for disadvantaged children in early 20th-century New York. Access to charity nurseries with kindergarten instruction raised children's years of education and reduced their likelihood of working in low-skilled jobs later in life. Instead, exposed children were more likely to work in jobs requiring higher cognitive and language skills. The effects were strongest for children from the most disadvantaged immigrant groups at that time. Our findings suggest that kindergarten instruction in charity nurseries helped immigrant children better understand teachers' instructions and learning materials which improved their economic outcomes in adulthood.

Abstract: This paper studies the economic impacts of land ownership concentration among the aristocratic elite in the Russian Empire. I document that areas with a higher concentration of noble land ownership were associated with lower levels of primary education during 1880–1911. Exploring the mechanisms, I show that by controlling local governments the landed elites decreased public spending on education, shifting the financial burden to peasant households in the 1880s–1890s. I also demonstrate that the extension of school provision through a government program of schooling subsidies after 1905 led to a relatively large increase in enrollment rates in regions with high noble landownership concentration, suggesting initial underinvestment in education in these areas. Finally, the paper identifies a significant negative influence of landed elites on industrial growth and firm productivity, with up to 56% of this effect attributable to the human capital channel.

Abstract: This article analyses infant and child sex ratios in late Imperial Russia relying on district-level information obtained from the 1897 Russian census (489 districts). The article shows that child sex ratios were, on average, relatively low (around 98 boys per hundred girls) due to the biological female advantage: the extremely high infant and child mortality rates took a greater toll on boys and pushed sex ratios down. These figures, however, hide significant geographical variation and the number of boys (relative to girls) was especially high in Southern, Western and Northern Russia. Apart from the direct impact that different mortality environments could have exerted on sex-specific mortality rates and therefore on the sex ratios of the surviving children, this article explores the potential role of economic, ethnic and religious factors and suggest that particular contexts shaped the perceived relative value of girls and resulted in discriminatory practices against girls. In particular, our results show the importance of different ethnic groups in explaining these patterns conditional on economic and religious factors. In addition, the residuals of our models show clear spatial patterns, thus suggesting that unobserved factors were playing an additional role in explaining son preference. Lastly, this article demonstrate a positive link between historical sex ratios and female discriminatory norms in modern societies and therefore points to persisting factors affecting gender imbalances.

Abstract: This paper studies the effect of sanitation infrastructure improvements on infant and child mortality (age 0-4) in the cities of the Russian Empire between 1870-1910.  Our preliminary results indicate that installing water pipes reduced infant mortality by 12-32%. The effect is more substantial for the locations that rely on rivers as a primary source of water supply and apply water filtering technology.  In addition, we demonstrate a large variation in access to safe water and sewage. In the 10 cities out of 77 that implemented both types of infrastructure, only an average of 53% and 44% of households were granted access to water and sewage, respectively. The infrastructure's impact on reducing child mortality rates could have been diminished by the exclusion of the poorest households, who are more susceptible to waterborne diseases. To our knowledge, this is the first paper that quantitatively assesses the effects of infrastructure improvements on mortality in Imperial Russia.

Abstract: This paper provides new insights on the role of public kindergartens in assimilating immigrant children. We exploit the rollout of public kindergartens towards the end of the 19th century in the United States together with a linked sample of first- and second-generation male immigrant children to study this question. We find that children exposed to public kinder gartens at age 5-6 completed more years of schooling. As adults they are less likely to marry a foreign-born spouse and marry a spouse with higher levels of education if they were exposed to kindergartens as a child. These effects are the largest for children whose parents came from Southern, Central and Eastern Europe who were considered to be the most cultural distant from the United States at that time. We also find for this group some improvements in the labor market and higher geographic mobility suggesting that the assimilation efforts of kindergartens were mostly working through economic incentives.

Abstract:  The period spanning from 1870 to the 1970s is often regarded as Sweden's "Golden Age" of economic development. Concurrently, a surge in grassroots social movements accompanied economic transformations, leading to the active political engagement of the emerging labor class (Bengtsson, 2023). This dual progression—economic empowerment of the labor class and the ascent of social movements—established the groundwork for Sweden's inclusive democratic system. Which factors contributed to this rapid transformative dynamics? This paper examines the role of educational content, specifically the prevalence of religious education, in influencing participation in political movements. Using data on the proportion of children attending catechism classes in primary schools in 1868, the paper applies a difference-in-differences methodology to show that areas with a higher prevalence of religious education experienced relatively lower growth in movements linked to labor unions and the Swedish Social Democratic Party in the 1890s and 1900s. Conversely, no significant effect was found for religious content on the spread of the Free Church or the Temperance movement. Importantly, the estimated effects remain robust after controlling for schooling funding, transport infrastructure access, and regional differences in economic development.

Abstract:  The paper studies the impact of establishing local quasi-democratic institutions - the Zemstvo - on educational development in the Russian Empire. We apply a causal methodology by leveraging spatial and time variation in access to the Zemstvo institution. We find that the number of public schools in the districts within theZemstvo region grew faster by approximately 0.4 log points (approximately 55%) in the period between 1864 and 1894. Exploring mechanisms, we find that districts with Zemstvo institutions implemented a tax-based system of school financing that reduced the financial burden on peasant communes and private households. Additionally, we demonstrate that the share of the central state in schooling financing was larger in non-Zemstvo areas. However, the central state's involvement was not sufficient to compensate for the lack of the Zemstvo. Our findings suggest that fiscal and policy decentralization helped alleviate coordination and financial constraints on the provision of basic schooling in the Imperial Russian context.

Abstract:  It is well documented by historians that the 1917 Russian Revolution caused many intellectuals commonly known as “White émigré” to flee the country due to political prosecution and havoc wrecked by the subsequent Civil War. There are many examples of prominent scientists who began their careers in the Russian Empire and then moved abroad. The existing literature shows that the dismissal of scientists can negatively affect scientific output in the long run. In this project, we extend the current research by exploring the case of "White émigré" scientists, with a particular focus on the role of ideology (Marxism-Leninism) as a disruptive factor in scholarly collaborations. By collecting comprehensive data on the biographies, research topics, and publications of Russian / Soviet scientists, we will test whether the outmigration of scientists produced a larger negative impact on productivity in the scientific fields more exposed to Marxism (e.g., economics).