War, Coal, and Forced Labor: Assessing the Impact of Prisoner-of-War Employment on Coal Mine Productivity in World War I Germany

Principal Investigator(s):  View help for Principal Investigator(s) Tobias Alexander Jopp, University of Regensburg

Version:  View help for Version V2

Name File Type Size Last Modified
Data on Figures.xlsx application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet 26.8 KB 12/13/2020 05:17:AM
Stata commands.docx application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document 27.1 KB 12/13/2020 05:16:AM
pows.dta application/x-stata 1.3 MB 12/13/2020 05:16:AM

Project Citation: 

Jopp, Tobias Alexander. War, Coal, and Forced Labor: Assessing the Impact of Prisoner-of-War Employment on Coal Mine Productivity in World War I Germany. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2020-12-13. https://doi.org/10.3886/E128721V2

Project Description

Summary:  View help for Summary This paper assesses the causal relationship between POW assignments and labor productivity for a vital sector of the German World War I economy, namely coal mining. Prisoners of war (POWs) provided significant labor. Combining data on all Ruhr mines with a treatment-effects approach, I find that POW employment alone accounted for 36% of the average POW-employing mine’s annual productivity decline over wartime. Estimates also suggest that the representative POW’s productivity averaged 32% of the representative regular miner’s productivity, and that POWs’ contribution to wartime coal output amounted to 3.9%. Violence did not serve as a powerful work incentive. The deposited files include a stata-file containing the data, a word-file containing the stata-code needed to replicate the results shown in the paper, and an excel-file containing the data on two figures.

Scope of Project

Subject Terms:  View help for Subject Terms coal; POWs; productivity; World War I; Treatment effects
Geographic Coverage:  View help for Geographic Coverage Germany
Time Period(s):  View help for Time Period(s) 1911 – 1920
Collection Date(s):  View help for Collection Date(s) 2015 – 2019
Universe:  View help for Universe All hard coal mines in the Ruhr area
Data Type(s):  View help for Data Type(s) administrative records data; observational data


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Published Versions

V2 [2020-12-13]

V1 [2020-12-13]

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