Dismantled once, diverged forever? A quasi-natural experiment of Red Army misdeeds in post-WWII Europe

Arbeitspapier

I study the economic consequences of the Red Army’s misdeeds after WWII. I exploit differences in spatial economic activity across the arbitrarily drawn and only for 74 days lasting liberation demarcation line between the Red Army and the Western Allies in South Austria. Dismantling and pillaging, but also (sexual) crimes made regions liberated by the Red Army a less desirable place to live and to start economic activities compared to adjacent regions. Spatial regression discontinuity (RD) estimates show that the liberation causes a relative population decline by around 26 to 31 percent until the present day. Measures of labor productivity also lag behind in Red Army liberated regions. I explain persistence with the selective migration pattern across the demarcation line in the direct aftermath of WWII.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: ifo Working Paper ; No. 240

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Demographic Trends, Macroeconomic Effects, and Forecasts ; Economic History: Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations: Europe: 1913- ; Regional and Urban History: Europe: 1913- ; Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity ; Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics: Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population; Neighborhood Characteristics
• Subject: Regional economic activity ; population shock ; dismantling ; Red Army ; Austria

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Ochsner, Christian
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich
• (where): Munich
• (when): 2017

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/171162
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:41 AM CET