Yannay Spitzer - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Yannay Spitzer
During the period 1881-1914, approximately 1.5 million Jews immigrated to the US from the Pale of... more During the period 1881-1914, approximately 1.5 million Jews immigrated to the US from the Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire. The data generated by this event can help explain the puzzling pattern of transatlantic mass migration: while time-series evidence shows that levels of migration were very volatile and highly sensitive to business-cycle fluctuations, there is little cross-sectional evidence for a systematic effect of income on migration—poorer countries did not always send more emigrants than wealthier countries. I address this using a unique data set, linking Ellis Island arrival records and incorporation of hometown-based associations of Russian Jews to information on their places of origin from the 1897 Russian census and from Russian yearbooks. Using a dynamic model of discrete choice with unobserved heterogeneity and an underlying diffusion process, I estimate the short-run effect of income shocks on migration, and show how the long-term effect of income levels cou...
During the period 1881-1914, approximately 1.5 million Jews immigrated to the U.S. from the Pale ... more During the period 1881-1914, approximately 1.5 million Jews immigrated to the U.S. from the Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire. The data generated by this event can help explain the puzzling pattern of transatlantic mass migration: while time-series evidence shows that levels of migration were very volatile and highly sensitive to business-cycle fluctuations, there is little cross-sectional evidence for a systematic effect of income on migration—poorer countries did not always send more emigrants than wealthier countries. I explain this puzzle by using a newly constructed and unique data set, linking Ellis Island individual arrival records of hundreds of thousands of Russian Jews to information from the 1897 Russian census on their towns and districts of origin. I document the evolution of their migration networks using data on the incorporation of hometown-based associations, and capture local push shocks from comprehensive data on crop yields in Russia. Using a dynamic model...
Labor: Human Capital eJournal, 2019
Jews are typically characterized as an urban minority. This paper challenges this view, while exp... more Jews are typically characterized as an urban minority. This paper challenges this view, while explaining the geographic distribution and variations in the occupational choices of Jews in the Pale of Settlement at the end of the nineteenth century. Viewing Jews as a rural service minority, with comparative advantage in countryside commerce, not in dense urban centers, a simple model of a regional labor market with inter-ethnic complementarities produces a series of empirical predictions. Using data from the 1897 Russian census, I show that the geographic dispersion of Jewish communities and the variation in their occupational distribution conform with these predictions and could be explained by this model. The mechanism at work was adverse effects of ethnic congestion in the niche of rural services: When the share of Jews in the population grew, Jews spilled across two margins - occupational, as manufacturing workers, and geographic, as frontier migrants to districts where Jews were ...
The five million Jews who lived in the Pale of Settlement at the turn of the century were overwhe... more The five million Jews who lived in the Pale of Settlement at the turn of the century were overwhelmingly over-represented in towns and in cities. They specialized in seemingly urban occupations, were relatively literate, and were almost absent in agriculture. This pattern persisted overseas where one third of them would eventually immigrate. Hence, Jews were typically characterized as an urban minority. I argue that the opposite was true. The economic ecology of the Jews, the patterns of choices of occupation and location, are described in a model in which Jews were countryside workers with a comparative advantage in rural commerce, complementing agricultural workers, and without comparative advantage in denser urban settings. Using data from the 1897 census, I show that the cross-sectional patterns across districts and localities were consistent with all the predictions of this model. When the share of Jews in the population grew, Jews spilled across two margins—occupational, as ma...
The mass migration of Jews from the Russian Empire to the US is commonly believed to have been ca... more The mass migration of Jews from the Russian Empire to the US is commonly believed to have been caused by two waves of pogroms (1881–1882 and 1903–1906). This view has recently been questioned by historians, but little quantitative evidence exists to support or refute it. I construct a data set that links hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants (1900–1914) and Jewish hometown-based associations (1861–1920) to their places of origin, and geo-locate hundreds of pogroms. I find no evidence that the Jewish migration was started by the first wave of pogroms; instead, migration after these pogroms continued along a pre-existing spatial trend from districts that did not experience violence. The second wave of pogroms, however, did meaningfully increase the rate of migration from the affected districts. I interpret these findings as an indication that neither pogroms nor economic or demographic conditions determined the timing of the beginning of mass migration from each district; while m...
We study migrant selection using the rich data generated by the migration of Italians to the US b... more We study migrant selection using the rich data generated by the migration of Italians to the US between 1907 and 1925. Comparing migrants' heights to the height distributions of their birth cohorts in their provinces of origin produces a measure of selection that is exogenous to migration, representative, and generated by almost unrestricted migration. The Italian migration was negatively selected at the national level, but positively selected at the local level. Selection varied systematically within Italy, with more positive local selection from shorter and poorer provinces. Selection was more negative among individuals with stronger connections in the United States and became more positive after imposition of the literacy test in 1917. These results highlight the importance of measuring selection at the local level to fully understanding the composition of migrant flows, shed light on the potential impacts of screening policies, and support theories that relate networks to mo...
The mass migration of Jews from the Russian Empire to the US is commonly believed to have been ca... more The mass migration of Jews from the Russian Empire to the US is commonly believed to have been caused by two waves of pogroms (1881–1882 and 1903–1906). Historians have recently questioned this view, but little quantitative evidence exists to support or refute it. To examine this view, I construct a data set that links hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants (1900– 1914) and almost 1,500 Jewish hometown-based associations (1861–1920) to their places of origin, and geo-locate hundreds of pogroms. I find no evidence that the Jewish migration was initiated by the first wave of pogroms; instead, subsequent migration continued along a pre-existing spatial trend and * I thank my committee members Joel Mokyr (chair), Igal Hendel, and Joseph Ferrie for their endless support and advice. I am grateful for comments and suggestions from members of the economic history community of Northwestern University, members of the department of economics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; from semi...
Journal of Development Economics
During the period 1881-1914, approximately 1.5 million Jews immigrated to the US from the Pale of... more During the period 1881-1914, approximately 1.5 million Jews immigrated to the US from the Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire. The data generated by this event can help explain the puzzling pattern of transatlantic mass migration: while time-series evidence shows that levels of migration were very volatile and highly sensitive to business-cycle fluctuations, there is little cross-sectional evidence for a systematic effect of income on migration—poorer countries did not always send more emigrants than wealthier countries. I address this using a unique data set, linking Ellis Island arrival records and incorporation of hometown-based associations of Russian Jews to information on their places of origin from the 1897 Russian census and from Russian yearbooks. Using a dynamic model of discrete choice with unobserved heterogeneity and an underlying diffusion process, I estimate the short-run effect of income shocks on migration, and show how the long-term effect of income levels cou...
During the period 1881-1914, approximately 1.5 million Jews immigrated to the U.S. from the Pale ... more During the period 1881-1914, approximately 1.5 million Jews immigrated to the U.S. from the Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire. The data generated by this event can help explain the puzzling pattern of transatlantic mass migration: while time-series evidence shows that levels of migration were very volatile and highly sensitive to business-cycle fluctuations, there is little cross-sectional evidence for a systematic effect of income on migration—poorer countries did not always send more emigrants than wealthier countries. I explain this puzzle by using a newly constructed and unique data set, linking Ellis Island individual arrival records of hundreds of thousands of Russian Jews to information from the 1897 Russian census on their towns and districts of origin. I document the evolution of their migration networks using data on the incorporation of hometown-based associations, and capture local push shocks from comprehensive data on crop yields in Russia. Using a dynamic model...
Labor: Human Capital eJournal, 2019
Jews are typically characterized as an urban minority. This paper challenges this view, while exp... more Jews are typically characterized as an urban minority. This paper challenges this view, while explaining the geographic distribution and variations in the occupational choices of Jews in the Pale of Settlement at the end of the nineteenth century. Viewing Jews as a rural service minority, with comparative advantage in countryside commerce, not in dense urban centers, a simple model of a regional labor market with inter-ethnic complementarities produces a series of empirical predictions. Using data from the 1897 Russian census, I show that the geographic dispersion of Jewish communities and the variation in their occupational distribution conform with these predictions and could be explained by this model. The mechanism at work was adverse effects of ethnic congestion in the niche of rural services: When the share of Jews in the population grew, Jews spilled across two margins - occupational, as manufacturing workers, and geographic, as frontier migrants to districts where Jews were ...
The five million Jews who lived in the Pale of Settlement at the turn of the century were overwhe... more The five million Jews who lived in the Pale of Settlement at the turn of the century were overwhelmingly over-represented in towns and in cities. They specialized in seemingly urban occupations, were relatively literate, and were almost absent in agriculture. This pattern persisted overseas where one third of them would eventually immigrate. Hence, Jews were typically characterized as an urban minority. I argue that the opposite was true. The economic ecology of the Jews, the patterns of choices of occupation and location, are described in a model in which Jews were countryside workers with a comparative advantage in rural commerce, complementing agricultural workers, and without comparative advantage in denser urban settings. Using data from the 1897 census, I show that the cross-sectional patterns across districts and localities were consistent with all the predictions of this model. When the share of Jews in the population grew, Jews spilled across two margins—occupational, as ma...
The mass migration of Jews from the Russian Empire to the US is commonly believed to have been ca... more The mass migration of Jews from the Russian Empire to the US is commonly believed to have been caused by two waves of pogroms (1881–1882 and 1903–1906). This view has recently been questioned by historians, but little quantitative evidence exists to support or refute it. I construct a data set that links hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants (1900–1914) and Jewish hometown-based associations (1861–1920) to their places of origin, and geo-locate hundreds of pogroms. I find no evidence that the Jewish migration was started by the first wave of pogroms; instead, migration after these pogroms continued along a pre-existing spatial trend from districts that did not experience violence. The second wave of pogroms, however, did meaningfully increase the rate of migration from the affected districts. I interpret these findings as an indication that neither pogroms nor economic or demographic conditions determined the timing of the beginning of mass migration from each district; while m...
We study migrant selection using the rich data generated by the migration of Italians to the US b... more We study migrant selection using the rich data generated by the migration of Italians to the US between 1907 and 1925. Comparing migrants' heights to the height distributions of their birth cohorts in their provinces of origin produces a measure of selection that is exogenous to migration, representative, and generated by almost unrestricted migration. The Italian migration was negatively selected at the national level, but positively selected at the local level. Selection varied systematically within Italy, with more positive local selection from shorter and poorer provinces. Selection was more negative among individuals with stronger connections in the United States and became more positive after imposition of the literacy test in 1917. These results highlight the importance of measuring selection at the local level to fully understanding the composition of migrant flows, shed light on the potential impacts of screening policies, and support theories that relate networks to mo...
The mass migration of Jews from the Russian Empire to the US is commonly believed to have been ca... more The mass migration of Jews from the Russian Empire to the US is commonly believed to have been caused by two waves of pogroms (1881–1882 and 1903–1906). Historians have recently questioned this view, but little quantitative evidence exists to support or refute it. To examine this view, I construct a data set that links hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants (1900– 1914) and almost 1,500 Jewish hometown-based associations (1861–1920) to their places of origin, and geo-locate hundreds of pogroms. I find no evidence that the Jewish migration was initiated by the first wave of pogroms; instead, subsequent migration continued along a pre-existing spatial trend and * I thank my committee members Joel Mokyr (chair), Igal Hendel, and Joseph Ferrie for their endless support and advice. I am grateful for comments and suggestions from members of the economic history community of Northwestern University, members of the department of economics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; from semi...
Journal of Development Economics