Immigration and structural change: Evidence from post-war Germany

Arbeitspapier

Does immigration accelerate sectoral change towards high-productivity sectors? This paper uses the mass displacement of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe to West Germany after World War II as a natural experiment to study this question. A simple two-sector model of the economy, in which moving costs prevent the marginal product of labor to be equalized across sectors, predicts that immigration boosts output per worker by expanding the high-productivity sector, but decreases output per worker within a sector. Using German district-level data from before and after the war, we find strong empirical support for these predictions.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 6690

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers ; Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure ; Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models: Instrumental Variables (IV) Estimation ; Economic History: Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy: Europe: 1913-
• Subject: immigration ; sectoral change ; output growth ; post-war Germany ; Einwanderung ; Aussiedler ; Strukturwandel ; Produktivität ; Wirtschaftswachstum ; Mehr-Sektoren-Modell ; Schätzung ; Alte Bundesländer ; Deutschland

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Braun, Sebastian ; Kvasnicka, Michael
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2012

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/62471
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET