Hans-Joachim Voth
University of Zurich
Department of Economics
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What does it take to live a meaningful life? We exploit a unique corpus of over 1,400 life narratives of older Americans collected by a team of writers during the 1930s. We combine detailed human readings with large language models (LLMs) to extract systematic information on critical junctures,...
We provide theory and evidence on the contribution of slavery wealth to Britains economic development prior to the abolition of slavery in 1833. We combine data on individual slaveholders from compensation records, an exogenous source of variation in slavery wealth from weather-induced shocks to...
February 22, 2017 - Article
Inspired by the accomplishments of German air force aces to try harder, average pilots won few additional victories but perished at a much higher rate. Whether it's students receiving academic recognition in school or professionals winning prestigious industry awards for their achievements, human...
A growing theoretical and empirical literature shows that public recognition can lead employees to exert greater effort. However, status competition is also associated with excessive expenditure on status goods, greater likelihood of bankruptcy, and more risk taking by money managers. This paper...
Why did the country that borrowed the most industrialize first? Earlier research has viewed the explosion of debt in 18th century Britain as either detrimental, or as neutral for economic growth. In this paper, we argue instead that Britains borrowing boom was beneficial. The massive issuance of...
Can autocracies win electoral support by showcasing economic competence? We analyze a famous case the building of the Autobahn network in Nazi Germany. Using newly collected data, we show that highway construction was effective in boosting popular support, helping to entrench the Nazi dictatorship....
What determines risk-bearing capacity and the amount of leverage in financial markets? Using unique archival data on collateralized lending, we show that personal experience can affect individual risk-taking and aggregate leverage. When an investor syndicate speculating in Amsterdam in 1772 went...
Social capital is often associated with desirable political and economic outcomes. This paper contributes to the literature exploring the dark side of social capital, examining the downfall of democracy in interwar Germany. We collect new data on the density of associations in 229 German towns and...
We analyze under which conditions intermarriage can be used as an indicator of tolerance, and whether such tolerant attitudes persisted in Germany during the last century. We find strong evidence for the persistence of tolerant attitudes towards intermarriage with Jews. At the same time, our...
Europeans restricted their fertility long before the Demographic Transition. By raising the marriage age of women and ensuring that a substantial proportion remained celibate, the "European Marriage Pattern" (EMP) reduced childbirths by up to one third between the 14th and 18th century. In a...
How persistent are cultural traits? This paper uses data on anti-Semitism in Germany and finds continuity at the local level over more than half a millennium. When the Black Death hit Europe in 1348-50, killing between one third and one half of the population, its cause was unknown. Many...
June 9, 2010 - Chapter
Using a new data set on capital account openness, we investigate why equity return correlations changed over the last century. On the basis of a new, longrun data set on capital account regulations in a group of 16 countries over the period 18902001, we show that correlations increase as financial...
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