IWH Construction Survey
IWH Construction Survey From 1993 until the first quarter of 2017, the IWH conducted regular surveys among companies. The results of these surveys could be used to promptly…
See page
IWH Industry Survey
IWH Industry Survey From 1993 until the first quarter of 2017, the IWH conducted regular surveys among companies. The results of these surveys could be used to promptly describe…
See page
Management Buyouts
Management Buyouts in Eastern Germany The study on management buyouts (MBOs) examines an important group of East German companies and their development: companies which, in the…
See page
Centre for Evidence-based Policy Advice
Centre for Evidence-based Policy Advice (IWH-CEP) The Centre for Evidence-based Policy Advice (IWH-CEP) of the IWH was founded in 2014. It is a platform that bundles and…
See page
Centre for Business and Productivity Dynamics
Centre for Business and Productivity Dynamics (IWH-CBPD) The Centre for Business and Productivity Dynamics (CBPD) was founded in January 2025 and works with policy and research…
See page
Research Clusters
Three Research Clusters Research Cluster "Economic Dynamics and Stability" Research Questions This cluster focuses on empirical analyses of macroeconomic dynamics and stability.…
See page
Guiding Theme and Research Profile
Tasks of the IWH Guided by its mission statement , the IWH places the understanding of the determinants of long term growth processes at the centre of the research agenda. Long…
See page
Organisation of Research
Tasks of the IWH Guided by its mission statement , the IWH places the understanding of the determinants of long term growth processes at the centre of the research agenda. Long…
See page
Evaluation of Place-based Policies
Evaluation of Place-based Policies An important part of IWH-CEP's work is the evaluation of political subsidy programmes aimed at certain regions such as the Joint Agreement for…
See page
Trade Shocks, Labour Markets and Migration in the First Globalisation
Richard Bräuer, Felix Kersting
Economic Journal,
No. 657,
2024
Abstract
This paper studies the economic and political effects of a large trade shock in agriculture—the grain invasion from the Americas—in Prussia during the first globalisation (1870–913). We show that this shock led to a decline in the employment rate and overall income. However, we do not observe declining per capita income and political polarisation, which we explain by a strong migration response. Our results suggest that the negative and persistent effects of trade shocks we see today are not a universal feature of globalisation, but depend on labour mobility. For our analysis, we digitise data from Prussian industrial and agricultural censuses on the county level and combine them with national trade data at the product level. We exploit the cross-regional variation in cultivated crops within Prussia and instrument with Italian and United States trade data to isolate exogenous variation.
Read article
