Paper of Eren Arbatli in Journal of Economic Growth

Congratulations to Eren Arbatli, Associate Professor of the Department of Theoretical Economics, on the publication of his paper "Human Capital Transfers and Sub-national Development: Armenian and Greek Legacy in Post-expulsion Turkey " in the Journal of Economic Growth.

Below is a short summary of the paper:

Can the economic legacy of highly skilled groups persist long after they were uprootedfrom their homelands? To answer this question, we study long-term sub-nationaldevelopment in Turkey after the mass expulsions of the Armenian and Greek com-munities of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century. Since these events led toan almost complete and permanent removal of both communities from Turkey withina short time period, they provide a unique quasi-natural experiment that rules out anydirect minority influence on development in the post-expulsion period. By exploitinglocal variations in historical minority population shares and community buildingsacross modern districts and villages/neighborhoods within each district, we documenta sizable Armenian and Greek legacy effect on contemporary measures of economicdevelopment. We argue that this persistent influence is grounded on the significantcontribution of Armenian and Greek communities to human capital accumulationamong Muslims. We show evidence that inter-group transfers of skills and knowledgewere instrumental in this process, leading to greater human capital among Muslims inminority regions both in the past and today.