Economic Affairs

This project examines the  “contemporary” with a focus on defining moments such as: 1945, 1973, 1989, and 2001. In recent years the concept of the contemporary has been taken up within limited disciplinary discourses and in the context of distinct geographical settings. The horizon of this project, however, is the global. We employ a comparative and interdisciplinary approach to the hybrid term “contemporary” as it intersects various fields and serves as a heuristic device to understand phenomena in politics, culture, and the arts.

News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, an "open borders" United States absorbed millions of European immigrants in one of the largest mass migrations ever. New research by Stanford economist Ran Abramitzky challenges the perception that immigrants lagged behind native-born Americans in job pay and career growth.
 

BY CLIFTON B. PARKER

European immigrants to America during the country's largest migration wave in the late 19th and early 20th centuries had earnings comparable to native-born Americans, contrary to the popular perception, according to new Stanford research.

"Our paper challenges conventional wisdom and prior research about immigrant assimilation during this period," said Ran Abramitzky, an associate professor of economics at Stanford, faculty affiliate of The Europe Center and author of the research paper in the Journal of Political Economy.

New research challenges conventional wisdom about immigrant assimilation during the bygone era of open borders and mass migration.
Photo Credit: Lewis Hine/Library of Congress

New research challenges conventional wisdom about immigrant assimilation during the bygone era of open borders and mass migration.

Abramitzky and his colleagues found the average immigrant in that period did not face a substantial "earnings penalty" – lower pay than native-born workers – upon their arrival.

"The initial earnings penalty is overstated," said Abramitzky.

He said the conventional view is that the average European immigrants held substantially lower-paying jobs than native-born Americans upon first arrival and caught up with natives' earnings after spending some time in the United States. But that perception does not hold up to the facts, he said.

Abramitzky's co-authors include Leah Platt Boustan from the University of California, Los Angeles, and Katherine Eriksson from California Polytechnic State University.

The researchers examined records on 21,000 natives and immigrants from 16 European countries in U.S. Census Bureau data from 1900 to 1910 to 1920.

"Even when U.S. borders were open, the average immigrant who ended up settling in the United States over the long term held occupations that commanded pay similar to that of U.S. natives upon first arrival," Abramitzky said.

In that bygone era of "open borders," Abramitzky said, native-born Americans were concerned that immigrants were not assimilating properly into society – yet, on the whole, this concern appears to be unfounded. "Such concerns are echoed in today's debate over immigration policy," he added.

At the same time, Abramitzky said that immigrants from poorer countries started out with lower paid occupations relative to natives and did not manage to close this gap over time.

"This pattern casts doubt on the conventional view that, in the past, immigrants who arrived with few skills were able to invest in themselves and succeed in the U.S. economy within a single generation," Abramitzky and his colleagues wrote.

Age of migration

America took in more than 30 million immigrants during the Age of Mass Migration (1850-1913), a period when the country had open borders. By 1910, 22 percent of the U.S. labor force – and 38 percent of workers in non-southern cities – was foreign-born (compared with 17 percent today).

As the research showed, immigrants then were more likely than natives to settle in states with a high-paying mix of occupations. Location choice was an important strategy they used to achieve occupational parity with native-born Americans.

"This Age of Mass Migration not only is of interest in itself, as one of the largest migration waves in modern history, but also is informative about the process of immigrant assimilation in a world without migration restrictions," Abramitzky said.

Over time, many of the immigrants came from the poorer regions of southern and eastern Europe.

Abramitzky pointed out that native-born Americans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were concerned about poverty in immigrant neighborhoods and low levels of education among children, many of whom left school early to work in industry.

Consequently, American political progressives championed a series of reforms, including U.S. child labor laws and compulsory schooling requirements.

Still, some natives believed that new arrivals would never fit into American society. And so, in 1924, Congress set a strict quota of 150,000 immigrant arrivals per year, with more slots allocated to immigrants from northern and western European countries than those from southern and eastern Europe.

But those early-20th-century fears of unassimilated immigrants were baseless, according to Abramitzky.

"Our results indicate that these concerns were unfounded: The average long-term immigrants in this era arrived with skills similar to those of natives and experienced identical rates of occupational upgrading over their life cycle," he wrote.

How does this lesson apply to today's immigration policy discussion? Should the numbers of immigrants and their countries of origin be limited and those with higher skills be given more entry slots?

Abramitzky said stereotyping immigrants has affected the political nature of the contemporary debate.

"These successful outcomes suggest that migration restrictions are not always necessary to ensure strong migrants' performance in the labor market," he said.

All News button
1

616 Serra Street
Encina Hall West, Room 440
Stanford, CA 94305-6044

0
Kimberly Glenn Professor of Political Science
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Economy
101105_jenshainmueller_1583.jpg

Jens Hainmueller's research has appeared in journals such as the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of the American Statistical Association, Review of Economics and Statistics, Political Analysis, International Organization, and the Journal of Statistical Software, and has received awards from the American Political Science Association, the Society of Political Methodology, the Midwest Political Science Association.

Hainmueller received his PhD from Harvard University and also studied at the London School of Economics, Brown University, and the University of Tübingen. Before joining Stanford, he served on the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Affiliated faculty at The Europe Center
-

The paper that will be presented at this seminar, “Religion, Division of Labour and Conflict: Anti-Semitism in German Regions over 700 Years,” is co-authored by Luigi Pascali.

Part of the Economic History Seminar Series, co-sponsored by The Europe Center.

Landau Economics Building, Room 351

Sascha Becker Professor of Economics and deputy director of the ESRC Centre for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE) Speaker University of Warwick, UK
Seminars
-

Part of the Economic History Seminar Series, co-sponsored by The Europe Center.

Fabian Waldinger Associate Professor of Economics Speaker University of Warwick, UK
Seminars
-

Nicholas Craft will present new estimates of TFP growth at the sectoral level and an account of sectoral contributions to overall productivity growth, from his paper co-authored by Gerben Bakker (London School of Economics) and Pieter Woltjer (Wageningen University).  They improve on Kendrick (1961) in several ways including expanding the coverage of sectors, extending estimates to 1941, and better accounting for labor quality.  The results have important implications including that the pattern of productivity growth was generally ‘yeasty’ rather than ‘mushroomy’, that the 1930s did not experience the fastest TFP growth of the 20th century, and that the role of electricity as a general purpose technology does not explain the ‘yeastiness’ of manufacturing in the 1920s.

The link for a PDF copy of the paper may be found below.

Part of the Economic History Seminar Series, co-sponsored by The Europe Center.

Paper: A Vision of the Growth Process in a Technologically progressive Economy: the United States, 1899-1941
Download pdf

Landau Economics Building, Room 351

Nicholas Crafts Professor of Economics and director of the ESRC Centre for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE) Speaker University of Warwick, UK
Seminars
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

Appeared in Stanford Report, May 29, 2014

By Clifton B. Parker

The electoral eruption of anti-European Union populism is a reflection of structural flaws in that body but does not represent a fatal political blow, according to Stanford scholars.

In the May 25 elections for the European Parliament, anti-immigration parties won 140 of the 751 seats, well short of control, but enough to rattle supporters of the EU, which has 28 member nations. In Britain, Denmark, France and Greece, the political fringe vote totals stunned the political establishments.

Stanford political scientist Francis Fukuyama said the rise of extremism and anti-elitism is not surprising in the wake of the 2008 economic downturn and subsequent high levels of unemployment throughout Europe. In one sense, the EU elites have themselves to blame, he said.

"The elites who designed the EU and the eurozone failed in a major way," he said. "There was a structural flaw in the design of the euro (monetary union absent fiscal union, and the method of disciplining countries once in the zone)," said Fukuyama, the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, and Research Afflilate at The Europe Center.

Some have argued that the European Union should adopt a form of fiscal union because without one, decisions about taxes and spending remain at the national level.

As Fukuyama points out, this becomes a problem, as in the case of a debt-ridden Greece, which he believes should not have qualified for EU membership in the first place. In fact, he said, it would have been better for Greece itself to leave the euro at the outset of the 2008 crisis.

Still, Fukuyama said the big picture behind the recent election is clear – it was a confluence of issues and timing.

"It is a bit like an off-year election in the U.S., where activists are more likely to vote than ordinary citizens," he said.

Fukuyama believes the EU will survive this electoral crisis. "I think the EU will be resilient. It has weathered other rejections in the past. The costs of really exiting the EU are too high in the end, and the elites will adjust, having been given this message," he said.

Meanwhile, the populist parties in the different countries are not unified or intent on building coalitions with each other.

"Other than being anti-EU, most of them have little in common," Fukuyama said. "They differ with regard to specific positions on immigration, economic policy, and they respond to different social bases."

Ongoing anger

Dan Edelstein, a professor of French, said the largest factor for success by extremist candidates was "ongoing anger toward the austerity policy imposed by the EU," primarily by Germany.

Edelstein estimates that a large majority of French voters are still generally supportive of the EU. For the time being, the anti-EU faction does not have a majority, though they now have much more representation in the European Parliament.

Edelstein noted existing strains among the anti-EU parties – for example, the UK Independence Party in Britain has stated that it would not form an alliance with the National Front party in France.

Immigration remains a thorny issue for some Europeans, Edelstein said.

"'Immigration' in most European political debates, tends to be a synonym for 'Islam.' While there are some countries, such as Britain, that are primarily worried about the economic costs of immigration, in most continental European countries, the fears are cultural," he said.

As Edelstein put it, Muslims are perceived as a "demographic threat" to white or Christian Europe. However, he is optimistic in the long run.

"It seems a little early to be writing the obituary of the EU. Should economic conditions improve over the next few years, as they are predicted to, we will likely see this high-water mark of populist anger recede," said Edelstein.

Cécile Alduy, an associate professor of French, writes in the May 28 issue of The Nation about how the ultra-right-wing National Front came in first place in France's election.

"This outcome was also the logical conclusion of a string of political betrayals, scandals and mismanagement that were only compounded by the persistent economic and social morass that has plunged France into perpetual gloom," she wrote.

Historian J.P. Daughton said that like elsewhere in the world, immigration often becomes a contentious issue in Europe in times of economic difficulties.  

"High unemployment and painful austerity measures in many parts of Europe have led extremist parties to blame immigrants for taking jobs and sapping already limited social programs," he said.

Anti-immigration rhetoric plays particularly well in EU elections, Daughton said. "Extremist parties portray European integration as a threat not only to national sovereignty, but also to national identity.

Edelstein, Alduy and Daughton are all Faculty Affiliates of The Europe Center.

Wake-up call

Russell A. Berman, a professor of German studies and comparative literature, said many Europeans perceive the EU as "somehow impenetrable, far from the civic politics of the nation states."

As a result, people resent regulations issued by an "intangible bureaucracy," and have come to believe that the European Parliament has not grappled with major issues such as mustering a coherent foreign policy voice, he said.

"The EU can be great on details but pretty weak on the big picture," said Berman, who is the Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Faculty Affiliate of The Europe Center. "It is this discrepancy that feeds the dissatisfaction."

Yet he points out that the extremist vote surged in only 14 nations of the EU – in the other 14, there was "negligible extremism," as he describes it.

"We're a long way from talking about a fatal blow, but the vote is indeed a wake-up call to the centrists that they have to make a better case for Europe," Berman said.

Hero Image
All News button
1
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

Appeared in Stanford Report, June 9, 2014

By Clifton B. Parker

A new chapter in the Scottish independence movement could reshape the future of that country and the rest of the United Kingdom, Stanford faculty say.

Scotland will hold an election on Sept. 18 to decide whether it should break away from the United Kingdom. With the official kickoff of the Scottish independence referendum on May 30, the 4.1 million Scots who make up the country's electorate are mulling over how independence would affect a range of issues including agriculture, education, defense, health care and more.

Now, momentum seems to be on the side of the independence vote, said Christophe Crombez, a consulting professor in Stanford's Europe Center in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

"If you had asked me a year ago whether Scotland would vote for independence, I would have said no. Now I am not so sure. The current UK government has not handled this issue well. Threats, such as warnings that Scotland could not keep the pound, have backfired," said Crombez.

Economics and the EU

Scotland, which has significant – though somewhat dwindling – oil operations in the North Sea, would likely remain part of the European Union if it leaves the UK, Crombez said. Scotland highly favors membership, whereas Britain's view is more mixed about the 28-member bloc.

"The economic consequences of leaving the UK will be minimal for Scotland. Scotland would remain part of the EU single market. It could possibly keep more of its oil revenues," he said.

The political ramifications for a redrawn Great Britain are significant. "Great Britain would lose more of its prominent status in world politics. England would have to deal with an identity crisis, having lost its empire after World War II and now witnessing the unraveling of the UK," he said.

Extracting Scotland from the Great Britain political equation would likely give more power to conservative British voters, as Scotland tends to vote on the left side, Crombez said.

"Also, the British government wants to put the issue behind them. So when the vote goes down, they can finally move on one way or another from the Scottish independence issue," he said.

If Scottish voters elect to remain part of the United Kingdom, the British government has said Scotland will not get another chance at independence.

Historical origins

The current move toward independence stems from the 1980s, when Margaret Thatcher was Britain's prime minister.

"Thatcher's policies were intensely disliked in Scotland," Crombez said. "While she kept on winning elections in England, her party's support in Scotland dwindled. Scotland felt that England was imposing policies on it that it did not want. Devolution and independence were seen as ways to get out of that situation."

As a result, since the early 1990s the conservatives have not played a significant role in Scottish politics, he said. And in 1997, voters in Scotland approved "devolution," which granted them legislative powers in the form of the Scottish Parliament.

"In my opinion, calls for independence would have been even stronger if Scotland had not been granted the autonomy it got in the 1990s," he said.

The roots of Scotland's drive for independence stretch deep into Great Britain's past, said Priya Satia, associate professor of modern British history and Europe Center faculty affiliate.

According to Satia, "Some might say as far back as the Jacobite rebellion against the union of Scotland with England and Wales in 1707. Others might point to a much later originary moment – regional nationalisms like Scotland's emerged in the latter half of the 20th century as part of the British reaction to the loss of empire."

From 1603, Scotland and England shared the same monarch when James VI of Scotland was declared King of England and Ireland as well. The two kingdoms united in 1707 to form the Kingdom of Great Britain. Prior to this, Scotland had been a sovereign state for more than 800 years.

Scotland, Wales, England and Ireland lost that sense of "common identity" to a shared British brotherhood once the "colonial 'other'" no longer existed in the post-WWII period, said Satia.

Historian Peter Stansky says it would not be wise for Scotland to exit the UK.

"I think it would probably be a mistake for Scotland to vote for independence. At the moment I think it has a good situation," said Stansky, the Frances and Charles Field Professor of History, Emeritus.

Stansky noted, "It can act independently in some areas, participate in some British decisions and has English backup. Independence would be a nice sentimental gesture, but a bad move."

Hero Image
All News button
1
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

This paper written by political scientists Michael Bechtel, Jens Hainmueller and Yotam Margalit, is the first systematic analysis of the question of why European Union voters agree to bear the costs of bailing out other countries.

Jens Hainmueller is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Stanford and a Europe Center Faculty Affiliate.

For a more information, please visit the publication's webpage by clicking on the article title below.

All News button
1
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

Recap:  The Europe Center Lectureship on Europe and the World

 
On April 30, May 1, and May 2, 2014, Adam Tooze, Barton M. Briggs Professor of History at Yale University, delivered in three parts The Europe Center Lectureship on Europe and the World, the first of an annual series. 
 
With the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War as his backdrop, Tooze spoke about the history of the transformation of the global power structure that followed from Germany’s decision to provoke America’s declaration of war in 1917. He advanced a powerful explanation for why the First World War rearranged political and economic structures across Eurasia and the British Empire, sowed the seeds of revolution in Russia and China, and laid the foundations of a new global order that began to revolve around the United States. 
 
The three lectures focused successively on diplomatic, economic, and social aspects of the troubled interwar history of Europe and its relationship with the wider world. Over the course of the lectures, he presented an argument for why the fate of effectively the whole of civilization changed in 1917, and why the First World War’s legacy continues to shape our world even today.
 
Tooze also participated in a lunchtime question-and-answer roundtable with graduate students from the History department.
 
Image of Yale's Barton M. Briggs Professor of History Adam Tooze, speaking at Stanford University, May 2, 2014Tooze is the author of The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy(2006) and Statistics and the German State 1900-1945: The Making of Modern Economic Knowledge (2001), among numerous other scholarly articles on modern European history. His latest book, The Deluge: The Great War and the Remaking of Global Order 1916-1931, will be released in Summer 2014 in the United Kingdom and in Fall 2014 in the United States.
 
We welcome you to visit our website for additional details about this event.
 
 

Recap:  European Commission President José Barroso Visits Stanford

 
José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, delivered a lecture entitled, “Global Europe: From the Atlantic to the Pacific,” before an audience at Stanford on May 1, 2014. 
 
Barroso discussed at length the political and economic consequences of the global financial crisis of 2008 for European affairs. He acknowledged that the crisis revealed “serious flaws” in the economic management of some national economies, but stressed that the 28-member union adapted and reformed to handle the fallout from the crisis. For example, he explained how banking supervision is now controlled at the “European level through the European Central Bank,” and that “there are common rules for banks so that we avoid having to use taxpayers' money to rescue them." 
 
Barroso also discussed various political and security aspects related to the ongoing upheaval in Ukraine, and affirmed that Europe “stands ready” to support the country as it comes “closer to the European Union.” He added that Russia’s decision “to interfere, to destabilize, and to occupy part of the territory of a neighboring country” was a “gesture that we hoped was long buried in history books.”
 
Image of José Manuel Barroso, President of the European CommissionBarroso was named President of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) of Portugal in 1999, following which he was re-elected three times. He was appointed Prime Minister of Portugal in 2002. He remained in office until July 2004 when he was elected by the European Parliament to the post of President of the European Commission. He was re-elected to a second term as President of the European Commission by an absolute majority in the European Parliament in September 2009.
 
We welcome you to visit our website for additional details about this event.
 
 

Workshop:  Comparative Approaches to the Study of Immigration, Ethnicity, and Religion

 
On May 9, 2014 and May 10, 2014, The Europe Center will host the Fourth Annual Workshop on Comparative Approaches to the Study of Immigration, Ethnicity, and Religion.
 
Speakers draw from a range of national and international universities and include Jens Hainmueller, Dominik Hangartner, Efrén Pérez, Lauren Prather, Jorge Bravo,  Giovanni Facchini, Cecilia Testa, Harris Mylonas, Rahsaan Maxwell, Ali Valenzuela, Mark Helbling, Rob Ford, Matthew Wright, Karen Jusko, Maggie Peters, Justin Gest, Rafaela M. Dancygier, and Yotam Margalit.
 
The all-day workshop will begin at 8:30 am on Friday and at 9:15 am on Saturday, and will be held in the CISAC Conference Room in Encina Hall. Visitors are cordially invited to attend. 
 
We welcome you to visit our website for additional details about this event.
 
 

Spring 2014 Graduate Student Grant Competition Winners Announced

 
Please join us in congratulating the winners of The Europe Center Spring 2014 Graduate Student Grant Competition:
 
Lisa Barge, German Studies, “Beyond Objectivity: Questioning Shifting Scientific Paradigms in Erwin Schrödinger's Thought”
 
Michela Giorcelli, Economics, “Transfer of Production and Management Model Across National Borders:  Evidence from the Technical Assistance and Productivity Program”
 
Benjamin Hein, Modern European History, “Capitalism Dispersed: Frankfurt and the European Stock Exchanges, 1880-1960”
 
Michelle Kahn, Modern European History, “Everyday Integration: Turks, Germans, and the Boundaries of Europe”
 
Friederike Knüpling, German Studies, “Kleist vom Ende lesen”
 
Orysia Kulick, History, “Politics, Power, and Informal Networks in Soviet Ukraine”
 
Claire Rydell, U.S. History, “Inventing an American Liberal Tradition: How England's John Locke Became ‘America's Philosopher’, 1700-2000”
 
Lena Tahmassian, Iberian and Latin American Cultures, “Post-Utopian Visions: Modes of Countercultural Discourse of the Spanish Transition to Democracy”
 
Donni Wang, Classics, “Illich Seminar”
 
Lori Weekes, Anthropology & Law, “Nation Building in the Post-Soviet Baltics as a Legal, Institutional, and Ethno-Cultural Project”
 
The Spring Grant Competition winners will join 16 graduate students who were awarded competitive research grants by the Center in Fall 2013. The Center regularly supports graduate and professional students at Stanford University whose research or work focuses on Europe. Funds are available for Ph.D. candidates across a wide range of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences to prepare for dissertation research and to conduct research on approved dissertation projects. The Center also supports early graduate students who wish to determine the feasibility of a dissertation topic or acquire training relevant for that topic. Additionally, funds are available for professional students whose interests focus on some aspect of European politics, economics, history, or culture; the latter may be used to support an internship or a research project. 
 
We welcome you to visit our website for additional details about this event.
 
 

Meet our Visiting Scholars:  Vibeke Kieding Banik

 
In each newsletter, The Europe Center would like to introduce you to a visiting scholar or collaborator at the Center. We welcome you to visit the Center and get to know our guests.
 
Image of Vibeke Banik, Visiting Scholar at The Europe Center, Stanford UniversityVibeke Kieding Banik is currently affiliated as a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History, at the University of Oslo. Her main focus of research is on the history of minorities in Scandinavia, particularly Jews, with an emphasis on migration and integration. Her research interests also include gender history, and her current project investigates whether there was a gendered integration strategy among Scandinavian Jews in the period 1900-1940. Dr. Banik has authored several articles on Jewish life in Norway, Jewish historiography, and on the Norwegian women’s suffragette movement. She has taught extensively on Jewish history and is currently writing a book on the history of the Norwegian Jews, scheduled to be published in 2015.
 
 
 

Workshop Schedules  

 
The Europe Center invites you to attend the talks of speakers in the following workshop series: 
 

Europe and the Global Economy

 
May 15, 2014
Christina Davis, Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Princeton University
“Membership Conditionality and Institutional Reform: The Case of the OECD”  
RSVP by May 12, 2014
 

European Governance

 
May 22, 2014
Wolfgang Ischinger, Former German Ambassador to the U.S.; Chairman, Munich Security Conference
“The Future of European Security & Defence” 
RSVP by May 19, 2014
 
May 29, 2014
Simon Hug, Professor of Political Science, University of Geneva
“The European Parliament after Lisbon (and before)” 
RSVP by May 26, 2014
 
 

The Europe Center Sponsored Events

 
We invite you to attend the following events sponsored or co-sponsored by The Europe Center:
 
May 16 and May 17, 2014
“Let There Be Enlightenment: The Religious and Mystical Sources of Rationality”
A Stanford University Conference
Margaret Jacks Hall: Terrace Room
 
May 29, 2014
Josef Joffe, FSI Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution Research Fellow, and Publisher/Editor of Die Zeit
“The Myth of America's Decline: Politics, Economics, and a Half Century of False Prophecies”
Oksenberg Conference Room
 
Jun 3, 2014
Tommaso Piffer, Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University and University of Cambridge
“The Allies, the European Resistance and the Origins of the Cold War in Europe”
History Corner, Room 307
 
 

Other Events

 
The Europe Center also invites you to attend the following event of interest:
 
May 12, 2014
Latvian Cultural Evening: Sustaining a Memory of the Future
Cubberley Auditorium
 

We welcome you to visit our website for additional details.

All News button
1
Subscribe to Economic Affairs