Research Projects

Shared historical past shape trade relationships, even long after it ended. This project studies the long-lasting pro-trade effect of “special relationships”, which in the case of Germany emerged from the post-World War II division of Germany into four occupation zones. We use county-level data and a trade gravity model to measure and estimate the bilateral trade flows between Germany and its former occupiers. 

Team: Christiane Hellmanzik, Lucien Costard

With the rise of the Internet and the rapid growth of the ICT sector, as well as the shift to a more service-based economy, cities seem to be increasingly shaped by their innovation capacities and the presence of a highly skilled workforce. This project examines the impact of the digital economy on the shape and structure of cities and the factors that are conducive to the development of a city's digital economy. The project uses a firm-level dataset based on legal publications of German companies (announcements in the commercial register), as well as novel indicators of local knowledge infrastructure, such as connections and collaborations between universities and research institutions.

Team: Vanessa Hellwig, Christiane Hellmanzik

For most industries, creative production is highly influenced by the availability, quality, and quantity of colleagues and infrastructure in a given location. However, their role in literary production is less clear. This project aims to identify the circumstances and contexts that foster literary production, including whether location, peer effects, and infrastructure are relevant to an industry in which the most influential producers are often referred to as lone geniuses.

Team: Christiane Hellmanzik

Visionopolis is an educational game designed for students of urban planning and economics and created to make learning more engaging by allowing players to experience the challenges of city planning through interactive decision-making.
In the game, players take on the role of city planners who must make choices that shape the development of their city. Each decision requires effort and leads to different benefits, reflecting the trade-offs that planners and policymakers often face.
Players will have the chance to try two different minigames, each focusing on a different topic related to urban development. During each minigame, players encounter various events that require them to make decisions in order to improve their city.
Through these choices, players explore how planning strategies and economic considerations influence the growth and well-being of a city.

Women’s participation in labour markets and commercial activity in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe and the Americas was characterised by substantial unpaid work, significant legal and social barriers to paid employment, and a severely limited range of occupations open to women, such as teaching, clerical work, and nursing [Goldin, 1988; Khan, 2016].
This paper investigates how women’s property and trading rights shaped women’s participation in creative production and employment in creative occupations in the United States. 

Using decennial Census data from 1850 to 1950 [Ruggles et al., 2025], we exploit
the heterogeneous roll-out of reforms expanding women’s trading and property rights
across US states in the late nineteenth century within a difference-in-differences framework.

We examine whether these legal changes affected women’s labour market participation,
the trajectories of their creative careers, and their creative productivity. One interpretation of our results is that liberalising trading laws altered women’s incentives and expanded their scope to monetise their talents. 

Team: Christiane Hellmanzik

Since its introduction in 1980, China’s One-Child Policy led to a sharp rise in male-biased sex ratios, reflecting underlying preferences for sons under binding fertility constraints. Decades earlier, Christian missionary activity introduced institutions and norms that may have influenced gender attitudes across regions. This project therefore studies whether areas exposed to missionary activity responded differently to fertility policy, and exhibit more equal sex ratios. It focuses on the interaction between long-run cultural legacies and demographic policies, and how historical exposure may shape contemporary social outcomes.

Team: Lucien Costard