International Migration Responses to Modern Europe’s Most Destructive Earthquake: Messina and Reggio Calabria, 1908

Yannay Spitzer (), Gaspare Tortorici and Ariell Zimran

No 27506, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The Messina-Reggio Calabria Earthquake (1908) was one of the most devastating natural disasters in modern European history. It occurred when overseas mass emigration from southern Italy was at its peak and international borders were open, making emigration a readily available option for relief. We study the effects of this disaster on international migration. We find that there was no large positive impact on emigration on average. There were, however, heterogeneous responses, with a more positive effect where agricultural day laborers comprised a larger share of the labor force, suggesting that attachment to the land limited an emigration response.

JEL-codes: F22 J61 N33 N53 O13 O15 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env, nep-his, nep-int, nep-lab and nep-mig
Note: DAE DEV LS
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w27506.pdf (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:nbr:nberwo:27506

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w27506

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().