German reunication was a positive market access shock for both East and West Germany. Regions that for 45 years had experienced a decline in population due to their loss in market access following the division of Germany of WWII were most strongly affected by this positive shock. We use an...

This paper explores the relationship between Nazi membership and social mobility using a unique and highly detailed dataset of military conscripts and volunteers during the Third Reich. We find that membership of a Nazi organisation is positively related to social mobility when measured by the...

We compile data spanning the period 1900 2014 and up to 30 countries to study long-run patterns in the tax elasticity of top incomes. Our results show that top tax elasticities vary tremendously over time; they were medium-to-low before 1950, virtually zero during the postwar era up to 1980 and...

This paper investigates the sources of variability in the mobilization of domestic tax revenue in oil-producing countries. It argues that the type of natural resources exploited during colonial rule can affect the contemporary levels of domestic tax revenue in oil countries. We test this...

This paper is concerned with the determinants and consequences of intercontinental migration over the past four centuries. It begins with a review of the history of primarily trans-Atlantic migration to the New World during the period of Colonial settlement. The contract and coerced migration...

It is argued that government credibility is an important resource and that it can be improved by delegating decision-making competence beyond the nation-state. It is hypothesized that such delegation should result in higher income and growth. Some former British colonies retained the Judicial...

In this paper, we evaluate the impact of cartelisation and managerial incentives on the productive efficiency of German coal mining corporations. We focus on coal mining in the Ruhr district, Germany's main mining area. We use stochastic frontier analysis and an unbalanced dynamic panel data set...

During the ongoing financial crisis the analysis of similar historical crises has gained more and more attention among economic researchers and forecasters. Existing studies, however, do not tackle the immense heterogeneity that is present in cross-country samples in a formal and consistent way....

In this paper, the influence of information costs on the integration of Northern European financial markets between ca. 1350 and 1560 is explored. The approach is based on splitting information costs into their constitutive components and on measuring one of these, i.e. the costs of transmitting...

This working paper concerns the local origins of Russian-Jewish immigrants to the United States, circa 1900. New evidence is drawn from a large random sample of Russian-Jewish immigrant arrivals in the United States. It provides information on origins not merely by large regions, or even by the...