Events

Mr. Max Marczinek
PhD candidate in Economics
University of Oxford

I study the causal impact of labour scarcity on productivity growth, a key driver of long-run economic growth. Exploiting a natural experiment from a 1710s plague outbreak in Northern Europe, I show that plagued regions shift into capital-intensive exports and see an export expansion. Using rich port-level trade data and a Ricardian model, I trace this shift to productivity growth driven by capital deepening. While population levels recover within four decades, the productivity and trade effects persist for almost a century, suggesting long-run changes in comparative ad-vantage. My findings imply that labour scarcity can induce productivity-enhancing reallocation.