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War and Structural Transformation: Evidence from Germany

22.04.2025 13:30 Uhr Hybrid: IOS (Raum 109) und Online Seminarreihe des AB Ökonomie

Talk by Tobias Korn (Leibniz Universität Hannover) as part of the Research Seminar Series of the IOS Economics Department.

This paper investigates the effect of World War I casualties on structural transformation in Weimar Germany. We newly geocode the birthplaces of 8.5 million wounded and killed German soldiers, and link these data to German county-level census data before and after WW I. Our main results are based on Continuous Difference-in-Differences estimations and show that counties with a higher human loss fell behind adopting a modern factory system. We trace this effect to a shortage of hard-to-replace white collar workers, especially in the crucial tertiary sector. Our study contributes to the understanding of the economic consequences of war during critical periods of economic transformation.