Historical episodes and their legacies across space: A famous case revisited

Abstract

There is a growing amount of literature in economic geography showing that historical episodes can leave long-lasting cultural and institutional legacies across space. For credibly identifying such persistent effects the analyses should not pick up trends preceding the respective episodes. Against this background, the paper re-examines the famous case of the German division and reunification. The empirical focus is on the persistent mark-up of women in work in East relative to West German regions that are often associated with legacy effects of the socialist regime that was in place in East Germany during the country's four decades of division. In contrast to the conventional wisdom in academia, policy, and the public, the current paper shows that the higher share of working women in East German regions is not due to a legacy of socialism. Female labor force participation was already remarkably higher in the East before the introduction of socialism. The general lesson is that any attempt to explain spatial variation in individual decision-making by persisting institutional and cultural legacies of certain historical episodes needs to assess regional conditions predating these episodes.