The continuing inflow of hundreds of thousands of refugees into many European countries has ignited much political controversy and raised questions that require a fuller understanding of the determinants and consequences of refugee supply shocks. This paper revisits four historical refugee...

An influential strand of research has tested for the effects of immigration on natives' wages and employment using exogenous refugee supply shocks as natural experiments. Several studies have reached conflicting conclusions about the effects of noted refugee waves such as the Mariel Boatlift in...

European countries experienced a large increase in labor supply due to the influx of Ukrainian refugees after the 2022 Russia invasion. We study its dynamic effects in a spatial model with forward-looking households of different skills, trade, and endogenous capital accumulation. We find that...

The recent ascent of right-wing populist movements in many countries has rekindled interest in understanding the causes of the rise of Fascism in inter-war years. In this paper, we argue that there was a strong link between the surge of support for the Socialist Party after World War I (WWI) and...

Democracy is not an absorbing state; transitions to autocratic rule have been frequent throughout history and often followed periods of instability under democratic rule. In this paper, we ask whether autocrats can win support among voters by showcasing their ability to restore order and to "get...

Social capital is often associated with desirable political and economic outcomes. This paper contributes to the literature exploring the "dark side" of social capital, examining the downfall of democracy in interwar Germany. We collect new data on the density of associations in 229 German towns...

How persistent are cultural traits? This paper uses data on anti-Semitism in Germany and finds continuity at the local level over more than half a millennium. When the Black Death hit Europe in 1348-50, killing between one third and one half of the population, its cause was unknown. Many...

We document that the spread of the Mafia in Sicily at the end of the 19th century was in part shaped by the rise of socialist Peasant Fasci organizations. In an environment with weak state presence, this socialist threat triggered landholders, estate managers and local politicians to turn to the...

Large-scale increases in discrimination can lead to dismissals of highly qualified managers. We investigate how expulsions of senior Jewish managers, due to rising discrimination in Nazi Germany, affected large corporations. Firms that lost Jewish managers experienced persistent reductions in...

The United States has admitted more than 3 million refugees since 1980 through official refugee resettlement programs. Scholars attribute the success of refugee groups to governmental programs on assimilation and integration. Before 1948, however, refugees arrived without formal selection...