After D-day? Destruction, Catch up, and Leapfrog

The next LEMMA seminar will host Lisa Chauvet, professor of Economics at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Her research interests include international financing, economic growth, migration, and political economy.

Lisa Chauvet will present "After D-day? Destruction, Catch up, and Leapfrog," with Abel François and Jean Lacroix.

Abstract: How do conflicts shape territories in the long run? To answer this question, this paper dissects population dynamics within Normandy throughout the 20th century. Despite the destruction caused by the 1944 Allied Landings, Normandy reversed the demographic decline it had experienced until 1940 – a dynamic at odds with previous literature showing a negative or neutral effect of conflict on city growth in the long run. Using a difference-in-differences estimator, we confirm that within Normandy, combat duration dampened population growth in the short run. In the medium run, areas exposed to combat recovered and later overshot the population levels implied by their initial trend. An analysis of a comprehensive inventory of all dwelling units 25 years after WW2 suggests that the post-war reconstruction effort explains this counterintuitive result.