Recent theories of the Long Divergence between Middle Eastern and Western European economies focus on Middle Eastern (over-)reliance on religious legitimacy, use of slave soldiers, and persistence of restrictive proscriptions of religious (Islamic) law. These theories take as exogenous the...

Recent theories of the Long Divergence between Middle Eastern and Western European economies focus on Middle Eastern (over-)reliance on religious legitimacy, use of slave soldiers, and persistence of restrictive proscriptions of religious (Islamic) law. These theories take as exogenous the...

Recent theories of the Long Divergence between Middle Eastern and Western European economies focus on Middle Eastern (over-)reliance on religious legitimacy, use of slave soldiers, and persistence of restrictive proscriptions of religious (Islamic) law. These theories take as exogenous the...

The research explores the effect of industrialization on human capital formation. Exploiting exogenous regional variations in the adoption of steam engines across France, the study establishes that in contrast to conventional wisdom that views early industrialization as a predominantly...

This paper analyzes the long-term effect of technological diffusion on productivity caused by immigration of skilled workers. In 1685 religious persecution drove highly skilled Huguenots into the backward Brandenburg-Prussia where they established themselves and transferred technological...

The research explores the effect of industrialization on human capital formation. Exploiting exogenous regional variations in the adoption of steam engines across France, the study establishes that, in contrast to conventional wisdom that views early industrialization as a predominantly...

The Renaissance era in Western Europe was marked by a flourishing of economic and cultural life that gave rise to numerous discoveries and inventions. This paper studies the role played by Greek migrants in this process. Using a newly constructed dataset on Greek migrants in Europe after the...

This paper analyzes long-term effects of skilled-worker immigration on productivityfor the Huguenots migration to Prussia. We combine Huguenot immigration lists from1700 with Prussian firm-level data on the value of inputs and outputs in 1802 in aunique data base. In 1685, religious persecution...