Social Structure and Development: A Legacy of the Holocaust in Russia / Daron Acemoglu, Tarek A. Hassan, James A. Robinson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Acemoglu, Daron.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Hassan, Tarek A.

Robinson, James A.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w16083.

NBER working paper series no. w16083

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Social Structure and Development

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2010.

Summary:

We document a statistical association between the severity of the persecution and mass murder of Jews (the Holocaust) by the Nazis during World War II and long-run economic and political outcomes within Russia. Cities that experienced the Holocaust most intensely have grown less, and cities as well as administrative districts (oblasts) where the Holocaust had the largest impact have worse economic and political outcomes since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Although we cannot rule out the possibility that these statistical relationships are caused by other factors, the overall patterns appear generally robust. We provide evidence on one possible mechanism that we hypothesize may link the Holocaust to the present---the change it induced in the social structure, in particular the size of the middle class, across different regions of Russia. Before World War II, Russian Jews were predominantly in white collar (middle class) occupations and the Holocaust appears to have had a large negative effect on the size of the middle class after the war.

Notes:

Print version record

June 2010.