Colonial trade encouraged the colonies to specialise in primary products. Did this prevent in-dustrialisation in the colonies? And did lack of industrialisation, in turn, help to keep the colonies under control? To answer these questions, we examine the impact of the temporary collapse in trade...

We examine the effects of monsoon rainfall shocks on agricultural output, wages, and prices in India. The effects are highly asymmetric: agricultural output falls by 16% after a negative shock, but a positive shock has no significant effects. Although the drop in agricultural output is very...

This paper examines the dynamic effects of monsoon rainfall shocks on yield, wages, and prices in the Indian agricultural sector. We distinguish between positive and negative rainfall shocks and explicitly consider their spatial dimension (local/regional). We find that particularly negative...

Europe trails the global frontier of productivity growth and the region's trend is sluggish. Much prospective economic growth for Europe is likely to come from AI and its adoption by European firms which is projected to shoot up the productivity trend. For such AI-generated growth to work, high...

Did recent technological change, in the form of automation, affect immigration policy in the United States? I argue that as automation shifted employment from routine to manual occupations at the bottom end of the skill distribution, it increased competition between natives and immigrants,...

This paper shows that, first, the effects of monsoon rainfall shocks on agricultural yield in India are highly asymmetric: yield falls strongly after droughts, whereas excessive rainfall has only little effects. Second, our key novel finding is that the short‐lived yield loss after a...

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of short-time work [STW] extensions - e.g. relaxing eligibility criteria or implementing new STW schemes - in the OECD during and after the Great Recession. First, we find that the dampening effect of STW on the unemployment rate diminishes at higher...

Mine-related transport infrastructure specializes in connecting mines to the coast, and not so much to neighboring countries. This is most clearly seen in developing countries, whose transport infrastructure was originally designed to facilitate the export of natural resources in colonial times....

Mine-related transport infrastructure specializes in connecting mines to the coast, and not so much to neighboring countries. This is most clearly seen in developing countries, whose transport infrastructure was originally designed to facilitate the export of natural resources in colonial times....

Africa’s interior-to-coast roads are well suited to export natural resources, but not to support regional trade. Are they the optimal response to geography and comparative advantage, or the result of suboptimal political distortions? We investigate the political determinants of road paving in...