Calendrier du 14 mars 2017
Applied Economics Lunch Seminar
Du 14/03/2017 de 12:30 à 13:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
ZHURAVSKAYA Ekaterina (PSE)
Middleman Minorities and Ethnic Violence: Anti-Jewish Pogroms in Eastern Europe
écrit avec Joint with Irena Grosfeld and Seyhun Orcan Sakalli
Abstract:
We present evidence to reconcile two seemingly contradictory observations: on the one hand, minorities often choose middleman occupations such as traders and creditors as a safeguard against violence; on the other hand, middleman minorities do become targets of persecution and ethnic violence. Using panel data on anti-Jewish pogroms in Eastern Europe between 1800 and 1939, we document that ethnic violence breaks out when income shocks hit at the times of a sharp increase in political uncertainty. In contrast, in times of a relative political stability, economic shocks do not instigate violence against middleman minorities. We also show that pogroms primarily affected localities where Jews dominated the credit sector as opposed to any other intermediary professions, including trade in agricultural or non-agricultural goods, suggesting that it is not the middlemen nature of the occupations of minorities that drove ethnic violence in times of economic and political crises, but the long-term character of the lending transactions.