Political Competition and Economic Divergence: European Development Before and After the Black

Jeremiah Dittmar and Luis Bosshart

No 16447, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: We document how the Black Death activated political competition and led to economic divergence within Europe. Before the pandemic, economic development was similar in Eastern and Western German cities despite greater political fragmentation in the West. The pandemic led to a divergence that reflected regional differences in politics. After the pandemic, construction and manufacturing fell by 1/3 in the East relative to underlying trends and the Western path. Politics institutionalizing local self-government advanced in the West, but not in the East. This divergence is observed across otherwise similar cities along historic borders and foreshadows a subsequent divergence in agriculture.

Keywords: Institutions; Political economy; Cities; Growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N13 N14 N60 N93 O10 O18 O40 O43 P48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-08
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP16447 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:16447

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP16447

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().