Abstract:
Little is known about the effects of political conflicts on the status of women in society. Polarizing attitudes might have a differential effect on women’s lives after a conflict. To consider this, the case of Greece after the Second World War is exploited, when the country became highly polarized between left and right ideologies, resulting in a three-year full-scale civil war. A referendum regarding the reinstatement of the monarchy is used as an indicator of political beliefs, and, in a difference-in-differences setting, it is demonstrated that 10% greater political opposition to the monarchy implied that female labour force participation was 1.4% higher after the war. A plausible mechanism is through conservative areas becoming more conservative and liberal areas becoming more liberal, and data on the construction of new churches, a conservative institution, are consistent with this hypothesis. Finally, it is found that these effects were persistent, as reflected by female labour force participation until 1981, and attitudes revealed in the European Value Survey of 1999.
Interview with HEDG's RA Joe Bilsborough on my job market paper as part of May 2021 Research Highlight at HEDG, SDU:
Abstract:
We examine how the Great Fire of 1666 affected the spatial distribution of economic activity within London. We construct a novel georeferenced panel of 1,238 goldsmith-bankers and 39 marketplaces active between 1630 and 1690, linked to parish-level boundaries, and combine this with household-level wealth data from Hearth Tax records. We show that the fire induced a persistent decentralization of retail market access, while financial services exhibited stronger spatial persistence, consistent with sector-specific agglomeration economies. Affected areas became more socioeconomically homogeneous: average wealth increased while intra-parish inequality declined, driven by selective return migration and rebuilding costs. Our findings provide rare historical microdata evidence on how urban economic geography and inequality respond to localized shocks, contributing to debates on resilience, spatial reorganization, and the persistence of economic activity within cities.
Danish dairying and demographic transition (with Nina Boberg-Fazlic, Markus Lampe, and Paul Sharp)
Abstract:
During the 19th century, Denmark underwent significant technological and institutional change in the dairying industry. The introduction of a new technology, the cream separator, that automated the procedure of butter making combined with a massive expansion of the cooperative movement made a great impact on the way creameries operated as well as their productivity. At the same time, the fertility transition took place in most Europe between late 18th century and early 20th century. Often industrialization created new job opportunities not only for men, but also for women. Specifically in the Danish case, industrialization came through the agricultural sector. However, in the dairying industry it created technological unemployment for women, as their manual work from home was replaced by the cream separators in cooperatives. We study the impact of women's technological unemployment on their fertility. We use historical census data provided by the Danish Demographic Database to create a panel of rural parishes and we combine it with a measure of market potential of cooperatives. In a difference-in-differences setup, we find that close to cream separators the fertility of married women declines after the introduction of the technology. We are seeking to understand the mechanisms that drive this decline through a cohort analysis.
Keywords: fertility transition, technological unemployment, Denmark