Mass Refugee Inflow and Long-run Prosperity: Lessons from the Greek Population Resettlement

Elie Murard and Seyhun Orcan Sakalli ()
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Seyhun Orcan Sakalli: King’s Business School, King’s College Londo

No 2005, RFBerlin Discussion Paper Series from Rockwool Foundation Berlin (RF Berlin)

Abstract: We investigate the long-term consequences of mass refugee inflow on economic develop-ment. After the Greco-Turkish war of 1919–1922, 1.2 million Greek Orthodox were forciblyresettled from Turkey to Greece, increasing the host population by more than 20% within afew months. To examine the long-term effects of this event, we build a novel geocoded datasetlocating refugee settlements across the universe of more than four thousand Greek municipali-ties that existed in 1920. Using a battery of empirical strategies relying on different margins ofspatial and temporal variation in the refugee inflow, we find that localities with a greater shareof Greek refugees in 1923 display higher level of prosperity and industrialization sixty yearsafter the event. These long-run benefits of refugees appear to be driven by the provision of newagricultural know-how and the transfer of technological knowledge in textile, which fosteredgrowth through higher diversity in complementary skills. The economic gains of the resettle-ment were lower in places where refugees were clustered in separate enclaves and where theirskills were less easily transferable due to local geographic conditions.

Keywords: Refugees; Immigration; historical persistence; economic development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N34 N44 O10 O43 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gro, nep-his, nep-mig and nep-ure
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Related works:
Working Paper: Mass Refugee Inflow and Long-Run Prosperity: Lessons from the Greek Population Resettlement (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:crm:wpaper:2005

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