29 Apr 2021

YSI-EHES Economic History Graduate Webinar: Anil Menon

Anil Menon, doctoral candidate from the University of Michigan will present his paper: Refugees and the Radical Right: Evidence from Post-WWII Forced Migrations Registration form to attend the webinar: here. Abstract: Do refugees reshape long-term political behavior in receiving areas? To investigate this question, I examine how the expulsion of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe to Germany at the end of WWII, one of the largest forced migrations in modern history, shaped electoral preferences over time. Expellee experiences surrounding forced migration helped foster a strong group identity. I argue that this shared identity and associated political demands motivated expellees to support the radical right. Using district-level data from 32 elections over 100 years, I find that communities which received greater shares of expellees remain more supportive ofthe radical right in the short, medium, and long term. This relationship particularly manifests when identity-based grievances are unresolved and politically salient. Mechanism evidence, including novel data on expellee monuments and associations, suggests that a durable expellee identity helps account for these findings. These findings reveal an enduring behavioral legacy resulting from forced migration.

6 May 2021

YSI-EHES Economic History Graduate Webinar: Karolin Süß

Karolin Süß, doctoral candidate from Ruhr Graduate School in Economics will present her paper: *On the origins of historical inheritance customs,gender norms and economic performance∗ Registration form to attend the webinar: here. Abstract: Equal inheritance customs in agriculture have been found to contribute to the persistence of more egalitarian gender norms and higher average incomes. However, the origins of these inheritance customs have been largely neglected in the empirical literature. Historical literature names intensive agricultural land use and vineyards in particular as one driver of equal sharing. This paper empirically tests this hypothesis with data from historical maps on vineyards and inheritance rules. Using a linear probability model, I find evidence that viniculture facilitated the adoption of equal inheritance in the territory of modern Baden-W ̈urttemberg. In a second step, I assess the question whether the historical division of labor in vineyards and equal inheritance mutually affect current gender norms and economic performance. Using OLS, I find support for more egalitarian gender norms in terms of parental leave use, female full-time employment and the difference between employment rates in areas of historical vineyards. Counterintuitively, the effect on modern employment rates is negative.

13 May 2021

YSI-EHES Economic History Graduate Webinar: Viktor Malein

Viktor Malein, doctoral candidate from the University of Southern Denmark will present his paper: Human Capital and Industrialization: the Case of German Colonists in the Late Imperial Russia. Registration form to attend the webinar: here. Abstract: Between 1890 and 1913, Russian Empire experienced a rapid transition to an advanced industrial economy, catching up with Western countries. The paper explores human capital’s role in Russia’s growth utilizing a unique historical experiment - the arrival of German colonists in 1763-1861, before Russia’s industrial spurt. Upon arrival in Russia, the colonists developed primary schools that played an essential role in settlers’ human capital formation throughout the 19th-20th centuries. I show that the schooling advancements caused by the colonists facilitated growth when Russia took an advanced phase of industrialization in the 1890s. The German presence increased modern occupations’ share and generated productivity gains in the industrial sector. I show that the effect is visible only in the modern industries, experiencing an inflow of new technologies and managerial practices with higher human capital requirements. Additionally, I demonstrate the positive spillover effect - the increase in literacy rates of the native population. One of the factors that can contribute to spillover effect is the increase in public funding at local level. Overall, the paper contributes to understanding human capital’s role in the industrial transition, showing the importance of population’s access to primary schooling.

20 May 2021

YSI-EHES Economic History Graduate Webinar: Gan Jin

Gan Jin, doctoral candidate from the University of Freiburg will present his paper: Circle of Fortune: The Long-Term Impact of Western Customs Institution in China. Registration form to attend the webinar: here. Abstract: How did colonial institutions affect modern economic outcomes? This paper studies the long-run effect of the customs institution founded by the Chinese Maritime Customs (CMC) - a foreign-run customs agency in the colonial period of China. The identification is based on the transmission of the CMC administration to China’s inland trade system, which was originally organized by the Chinese Native Customs. Under the CMC jurisdiction, Native Customs stations established clear procedural guidelines and improved transparency, discipline and anti-corruption measures. Using the exogenous criterion deciding on which Native Customs stations were reorganized - those located within a 25 km-radius of a CMC customs station -as an instrumental variable, my results show that counties affected by the CMC institution in colonial times are more developed today. Moreover, I find that today’s business and politics in these counties suffer less from corruption, suggesting that the CMC institution transmitted norms of honesty to the local society that persist in the long-run. Finally, I show that the takeover of Native Customs stations induced more historical trade in treaty ports and and better transportation infrastructure today.

27 May 2021

YSI-EHES Economic History Graduate Webinar: Pablo Fernández Cebrián

Pablo Fernández Cebrián, doctoral candidate from the University of Barcelona will present his paper: Withdrawal of the state: the provision of primary schooling in Mozambique under indigenato. Registration form to attend the webinar: here. AbstractAfter World War II, there was a generalised move among colonial states in Africa towards greater intervention in the provision of schooling. In Mozambique, on the other hand, the state kept its role in the provision of higher quality primary schooling for the white population, but it abandoned the direct running of rudimentary primary schools targeted at the black population. The agreements signed between the Portuguese Estado Novo and the Catholic Church in the early 1940s made this the preserve of Catholic missions, which rose exponentially in number and importance. As part of this shift, state-run schools were gradually transferred to Catholic missions. I explore the reasons for the Portuguese strategy, and find support for two mutually non-exclusive hypotheses. Firstly, I combine expenditure and enrolment data to construct measures of government expenditure per child enrolled in state-run schools and in Catholic mission schools prior to the shift. I find that transferring schooling responsibilities to Catholic missions may have been a cheaper option for the colonial state to expand rudimentary schooling than running schools itself. Secondly, I construct a geo-referenced dataset of the expansion of Catholic missions in Mozambique between 1922-1942, to show that the goal of transferring state-run schools to Catholic missions may have been not only to save resources but also to limit the influence of Protestant missions over the African population. In analysing the withdrawal of the state in Mozambique, I shed light on the political economy of schooling provision in colonial Africa through the case of a comparatively weak colonial power.

10 Jun 2021

YSI-EHES Economic History Graduate Webinar: André Lanza

André Lanza, doctoral candidate from the University of São Paulo will present his paper: FROM “ARMS TO THE FARM” TO LANDOWNERS? IMMIGRATION AND ECONOMIC MOBILITY IN SÃO PAULO STATE, BRAZIL (1886-1905). Registration form to attend the webinar: here. Abstract: During the age of mass migration, São Paulo state, Brazil, received over 2,5 million immigrants. Attracting immigrant labor was a priority, especially after the abolition of slavery. These foreigners had the dream to become landowners, but the dominant view among the farmers and the policymakers was that immigrants should be committed to work on the coffee farms, not own land right away. What is puzzling in this case is that, despite the existence and enforcement of land laws designed to protect the existing elites, many immigrants did obtained land, settled in it, and made significant improvements on it. According to my research, by 1920 European immigrants owned about 25% of the rural establishments in the state in São Paulo, or over 15% of the occupied land. The existing literature on European immigration and on the agricultural development of Sao Paulo is not clear on whether immigrants arriving to work on the coffee farms were able to ascend to landowner status. In this paper, I aim to explain it using individual data on the rural landowners of the state from an agricultural census of 1905 and over 1,5 million entries of the Immigrants Hostel registry records. By using an state of the art data analysis techniques, I crossed the names of the Europeans registered at the Immigrants Hostel with the foreigners listed as landowners in the 1905 census. This allowed me to identify who were and how many of the immigrants who passed through the Hostel were actually able to acquire land. In this paper I show that the answer varies with the nationality of the immigrant, their timing of arrival and with their location at the state.

17 Jun 2021

YSI-EHES Economic History Graduate Webinar: Zhihao Xu

Zhihao Xu, doctoral candidate from the University of California, Los Angeles will present his paper: “Price Convergence Through a Financial Network: Does Financial Integration Impact Price Integration in Real Sectors?” Live on Zoom on June 17, 2021 09:00 Paris | 08:00 London15:00 Hong Kong/Beijing/Singapore00:00 Los Angeles | 16:00 Tokyo | 17:00 Sydney Registration form to attend the webinar: here. Chair: Professor Debin Ma (Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University), Co-Director of the International Society for Quantitative History AbstractHow does financial integration impact price integration in real sectors? Using newly hand-collected data from a domestic exchange market during the Chinese Civil War (1945-1949), I model the connection between these two integrations measured respectively by capital flow costs (or domestic exchange rates) and commodity relative prices across cities. I use battle shocks to a financial hub in the exchange network to identify the impact of exchange rates on price convergence between a city pair connected to the hub. I find that (1) city pairs with a direct domestic exchange link exhibited faster commodity price convergence than others; (2) battles around financial hubs tended to raise capital flow costs between a connected city pair, decelerating price convergence by 4% - 8%; (3) a weak form of purchasing power parity holds: a 1% depreciation in the domestic exchange rates was associated with a 0.2%-0.3% reduction in inflation rate differentials; and (4) a higher inflation rate did not impede or strengthen the price convergence channel via domestic exchanges. These results imply that China’s financial development was more sophisticated than expected relative to its status as an agricultural economy in the early 20th century. We are very happy to collaborate for this session with the Quantitative History Webinar Series conveners. The Quantitative History Webinar Series, convened by Professor Zhiwu Chen and Dr. Chicheng Ma of The University of Hong Kong (HKU), aims to provide researchers, teachers and students with an online intellectual platform to keep up to date with the latest research in the field, promoting the dissemination of research findings and interdisciplinary use of quantitative methods in historical research. The Series is co-organized by the International Society for Quantitative History, HKU Business School, and the Asia Global Institute (AGI).