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This paper shows that historical missionary activity has had a persistent effect on schooling outcomes, and contributed to a reversal of fortunes wherein historically richer ethnic groups are poorer today. Combining contemporary individual-level data with a newly constructed dataset on mission stations in Nigeria, we find that individuals whose ancestors were exposed to greater missionary activity have higher levels of schooling. This effect is robust to omitted heterogeneity, ethnicity fixed effects, and reverse causation. We find inter-generational factors and the persistence of early advantages in educational infrastructure to be key channels through which the effect has persisted. Consistent with theory, the effect of missions on current schooling is larger for population subgroups that have historically suffered disadvantages in access to education.

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This article studies the relative productivity of skilled to unskilled workers across countries. Relative productivities are broken down into the human capital embodied in skilled workers and relative physical productivities (reflecting production techniques). I find that skilled workers from poorer countries embody less human capital and are also relatively less physically productive. Furthermore, results show that production techniques are inappropriate for most low‐income countries, and these countries experience large increases in GDP per capita by increasing the relative physical productivity of skilled to unskilled workers. This suggests that there are significant barriers to the adoption of skill‐complementary technologies.

This study provides evidence that individuals who grew up during the 1930's Jewish expulsions are less likely to show interest and participate in politics. The estimates imply that, at the mean, individuals in their impressionable ages at the time of the expulsions are about 13% less likely to be interested in politics and 26% less likely to participate in politics. These results are not found for individuals who were older at the time of the expulsions nor for those growing up during world War (WWII). Results are robust to fixed region and birth‐year characteristics, various definitions of impressionable ages, and composition bias induced by differential migration and mortality rates across regions and cohorts. The estimates are also not driven by other regional differences in 1930's political participation, party support, Catholic share, exposure and destruction during WWII, urbanization, and other regional characteristics. We provide evidence that the adverse effects on political attitudes we find are explained by a model of political participation emphasizing the role of civic skills and socioeconomic status acquired at younger ages. Exposure to the expulsions when young is associated with lower adult volunteerism, trust, church attendance, and socioeconomic status. (JEL O12, D72, D74, J15)