Collective Remembrance and Private Choice: German–Greek Conflict and Behavior in Times of Crisis

Abstract

When does collective memory influence behavior? We highlight two conditions under which the memory of past events comes to matter for the present: the associative nature of memory and institutionalized acts of commemoration by the state. During World War II, German troops occupying Greece perpetrated numerous massacres. Memories of those events resurfaced during the 2009 Greek debt crisis, leading to a drop in German car sales in Greece, especially in areas affected by German reprisals. Differential economic performance did not drive this divergence. Multiple pieces of evidence suggest that current events reactivated past memories, creating a backlash against Germany. This backlash also manifested in political behavior, with vote shares of anti-German parties increasing in reprisal areas after the start of the debt crisis. Using quasi-random variation in public recognition of victim status, we show that institutionalized collective memory amplifies the effects of political conflict on economic and political behavior.

The Political Legacy of Forced Migration: Evidence from Post-WWII Germany

“…Moreover, consistent with evidence of competitive victimhood and more negative attitudes toward contemporary refugees among some expellee descendants (Dinas et al, 2021b), I find that areas with greater shares of expellees became more supportive of the AfD when it transformed into an anti-refugee party between 2013 and 2017. These findings corroborate a growing body of work that emphasizes the importance of political context for activating historical legacies (Charnysh, 2015; Fouka & Voth, nd; Rozenas & Zhukov, 2019).…”

“…Based on research that highlights the importance of political context for activating historical legacies (Belmonte & Rochlitz, 2019; Fouka and Voth, nd; Rozenas & Zhukov, 2019), I expect that the appeal of the radical right varied over time for individuals with an expellee identity as a function of whether identity-based grievances were unresolved and politically salient. If this is true, we should expect their voting behavior to mirror such temporal variation.…”

Taxation with a Grain of Salt: The Long-Term Effect of Fiscal Policy on Local Development

“…Beyond spatial persistence and path-dependency, the quasi-experimental findings in this paper indicate that -absent specific policies -regional convergence is not mechanic even very locally (on regional convergence, or the lack thereof, see Barro and Sala-i Martin, 1992;Kim, 1995;Mitch-8 Furthermore, an extensive literature focuses on the long-term impact of historical shocks, such as wars or epidemics, on subsequent economic outcomes (e.g. Becker, Grosfeld, Grosjean, Voigtlander, and Zhuravskaya, 2020;Fouka and Voth, 2016;Galletta and Giommoni, 2020). 9 Seminal empirical work on persistence and path dependency in a spatial setting include Weinstein (2002, 2008), as well as Bleakley andLin (2012, 2015).…”

Local infectious disease experience influences vaccine refusal rates: a natural experiment

“…For example, these may include random factors that differed between administrative units but that persisted within administrative units post-1907 and that may have affected people's beliefs, such as pro- or anti-vaccination personalities who were influential in community networks such as churches, schools or sports clubs. Similar specifications to (2.1) have commonly been applied in programme evaluation [46] and have also been used to estimate the effects of historical experience on future outcomes [47].…”