Details
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1170-1206 |
| Number of pages | 37 |
| Journal | Review of Economic Studies |
| Volume | 86 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| Publication status | Published - 1 May 2019 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Abstract
Historically, European Jews have specialized in financial services while being the victims of antisemitism. We find that the present-day demand for finance is lower in German counties where historical antisemitism was higher, compared to otherwise similar counties. Households in counties with high historical antisemitism have similar saving rates but invest less in stocks, hold lower saving deposits, and are less likely to get a mortgage to finance homeownership after controlling for wealth and a rich set of current and historical covariates. Present-day antisemitism and supply-side forces do not fully explain the results. Households in counties where historical antisemitism was higher distrust the financial sector more—a potential cultural externality of historical antisemitism that reduces wealth accumulation in the long run.
Keywords
- Cultural economics, Cultural finance, History and finance, Household finance, Intergenerational transmission of norms, Stereotypes
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Economics, Econometrics and Finance(all)
- Economics and Econometrics
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In: Review of Economic Studies, Vol. 86, No. 3, 01.05.2019, p. 1170-1206.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Research › peer review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Historical antisemitism, ethnic specialization, and financial development
AU - D’Acunto, Francesco
AU - Prokopczuk, Marcel
AU - Weber, Michael
N1 - Funding information: Acknowledgments. The views expressed in this article do not reflect those of the DIW, the Bundesbank, GESIS, or the Banque de France. We thank the Editor, Nicola Gennaioli, and four anonymous referees for many excellent comments which helped improve the paper. We thank Joachim Voth and Nico Voigtlaender for making their data on anti-Jewish violence publicly available, Thomas Kick for his help with the Bundesbank data on county-level bank branches, the ifo-Prussian Economic History project, Michael Koetter for sharing his data on the efficiency of the local German banking system, and Martin Eisele for his great assistance in the access of the PHF Bundesbank data. In addition, we are indebted to ALLBUS and DIW Berlin for allowing us to merge their two proprietary data sources. In particular, we thank Andre Kastilan and Julia Klinger for creating measures of antisemitism at the county level from ALLBUS, and Jan Goebel for allowing the merging of these measures based on county identifiers to the SOEP. For very helpful comments and discussions, we thank Ran Abramitzky, Nick Barberis, Zahi Ben-David, Kelley Bergsma, Johannes Buggle, Davide Cantoni, Jason Chen, Pierluigi D’Acunto, Stefano DellaVigna, Barry Eichengreen, Ruben Enikolopov, Paola Giuliano, Rick Green, Tarek Hassan, Danling Jiang, Samuli Knupfer, Ross Levine, Sonya Lim, Dmitry Livdan, Ulrike Malmendier, Gustavo Manso, Petra Moser, Rabbi Adam Naftalin-Kelman, Terry Odean, Martha Olney, Christine Parlour, Chris Parsons, Caitlin Rosenthal, Paola Sapienza, Andrei Shleifer, Stephan Siegel, Andrei Simonov, Paul Smeets, Robert Vishny, Jason Wittenberg, Noam Yuchtman, and especially Luigi Guiso, Nico Voigtlaender, and Joachim Voth, as well as participants at several seminars and conferences. We also thank Stephen Lamb for excellent research assistance. All errors are our own. Weber acknowledges financial support from the Cohen Keenoy Faculty Research Fund at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
PY - 2019/5/1
Y1 - 2019/5/1
N2 - Historically, European Jews have specialized in financial services while being the victims of antisemitism. We find that the present-day demand for finance is lower in German counties where historical antisemitism was higher, compared to otherwise similar counties. Households in counties with high historical antisemitism have similar saving rates but invest less in stocks, hold lower saving deposits, and are less likely to get a mortgage to finance homeownership after controlling for wealth and a rich set of current and historical covariates. Present-day antisemitism and supply-side forces do not fully explain the results. Households in counties where historical antisemitism was higher distrust the financial sector more—a potential cultural externality of historical antisemitism that reduces wealth accumulation in the long run.
AB - Historically, European Jews have specialized in financial services while being the victims of antisemitism. We find that the present-day demand for finance is lower in German counties where historical antisemitism was higher, compared to otherwise similar counties. Households in counties with high historical antisemitism have similar saving rates but invest less in stocks, hold lower saving deposits, and are less likely to get a mortgage to finance homeownership after controlling for wealth and a rich set of current and historical covariates. Present-day antisemitism and supply-side forces do not fully explain the results. Households in counties where historical antisemitism was higher distrust the financial sector more—a potential cultural externality of historical antisemitism that reduces wealth accumulation in the long run.
KW - Cultural economics
KW - Cultural finance
KW - History and finance
KW - Household finance
KW - Intergenerational transmission of norms
KW - Stereotypes
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85065879903&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1093/restud/rdy021
DO - 10.1093/restud/rdy021
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85065879903
VL - 86
SP - 1170
EP - 1206
JO - Review of Economic Studies
JF - Review of Economic Studies
SN - 0034-6527
IS - 3
ER -