The post here on PIGS without Jews, suggesting that Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain were in economic trouble in part because they have barely any Jews, was one of the most intensely controversial that we have published here. So it's heartening, I suppose, to see a new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research authored by Daron Acemoglu of MIT, Tarek A. Hassan of the University of Chicago, and James A. Robinson of Harvard. From the abstract:
We document a statistical association between the severity of the persecution and mass murder of Jews (the Holocaust) by the Nazis during World War II and long-run economic and political outcomes within Russia. Cities that experienced the Holocaust most intensely have grown less, and cities as well as administrative districts (oblasts) where the Holocaust had the largest impact have worse economic and political outcomes since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Although we cannot rule out the possibility that these statistical relationships are caused by other factors, the overall patterns appear generally robust.
