Productivity and Knowledge Transfer: Evidence from Prisoner Employment

Jacopo Ballabio, Michela Giorcelli and Claudio Labanca

No 22141, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: Worker mobility can facilitate the transmission of knowledge and ultimately increase productivity. Yet isolating such productivity effects is challenging because of worker sorting, labor market adjustments, and assimilation processes. We exploit quasiexperimental variation arising from the temporary employment of Italian prisoners of war in Australian agriculture during World War II to isolate the effects of worker mobility on productivity. We find that this inflow of workers increased agricultural output in the short run and generated productivity gains that persisted after the workers’ departure. Examining mechanisms, we show that the employment of foreign workers led to a shift toward crops better suited to local conditions and to greater mechanization in areas that received workers from Italian provinces where such crops and technologies were more common. These origin-specific effects are stronger in areas with lower ex-ante productivity and where the mismatch between cultivated and suitable crops is greater. Overall, our findings point to the transfer of origin-specific knowledge as a key channel through which worker mobility generates lasting productivity gains in the host economy.

JEL-codes: J24 J61 N40 N50 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-11
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP22141 (application/pdf)

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:22141

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP22141

Access Statistics for this paper

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