Stanford University

The long-term impact of employment bans on the economic integration of refugees

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Many European countries impose employment bans that prevent asylum seekers from entering the local labor market for a certain waiting period upon arrival. We provide evidence on the long-term effects of these employment bans on the subsequent economic integration of refugees. We leverage a natural experiment in Germany, where a court ruling prompted a reduction in the length of the employment ban. We find that, 5 years after the waiting period was reduced, employment rates were about 20 percentage points lower for refugees who, upon arrival, had to wait for an additional 7 months before they were allowed to enter the labor market. It took up to 10 years for this employment gap to disappear. Our findings suggest that longer employment bans considerably slowed down the economic integration of refugees and reduced their motivation to integrate early on after arrival. A marginal social cost analysis for the study sample suggests that this employment ban cost German taxpayers about 40 million euros per year, on average, in terms of welfare expenditures and foregone tax revenues from unemployed refugees.

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The Intertemporal Keynesian Cross

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We demonstrate the importance of intertemporal marginal propensities to consume (iMPCs) in disciplining general equilibrium models with heterogeneous agents and nominal rigidities. In a benchmark case, the dynamic response of output to a change in the path of government spending or taxes is given by an equation involving iMPCs, which we call the intertemporal Keynesian cross. Fiscal multipliers depend only on the interaction between iMPCs and public deficits. We provide empirical estimates of iMPCs and argue that they are inconsistent with representative- agent, two-agent and one-asset heterogeneous-agent models, but can be matched by models with two assets. Quantitatively, models that match empirical iMPCs predict deficit-financed fiscal multipliers that are larger than one, even if monetary policy is active, taxation is distortionary, and investment is crowded out. These models also imply larger amplification of shocks that involve private borrowing, as we illustrate in an application to deleveraging.

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Mirrors for Princes and Sultans: Advice on the Art of Governance in the Medieval Christian and Islamic Worlds

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When did European modes of political thought diverge from those that existed in other world regions? We compare Muslim and Christian political advice texts from the medieval period using automated text analysis to identify four major and 60 granular themes common to Muslim and Christian polities, and examine how emphasis on these topics evolves over time. For Muslim texts, we identify an inflection point in political discourse between the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, a juncture that historians suggest is an ideational watershed brought about by the Turkic and Mongol invaders. For Christian texts, we identify a decline in the relevance of religious appeals from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. Our findings also suggest that Machiavelli’s Prince was less a turn away from religious discourse on statecraft than the culmination of centuries-long developments in European advice literature.

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The Journal of Politics
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Alison McQueen
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Projecting Nature: Agostino Scilla’s Seventeenth-Century Fossil Drawings

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In 1670 the Sicilian painter Agostino Scilla (1629–1700) devised an entirely new way of depicting fossils when he wrote and illustrated his Vain Speculation Undeceived by Sense (1670–1671), which argued that fossils were the remains of once living creatures and not mimetic stones. This essay explores the nature of Scilla’s graphic innovations, comparing his fossils drawings and Pietro Santi Bartoli’s engravings of them to earlier and contemporary images of fossils. Scilla captured the effect of time on nature by infusing his style of drawing with his philosophical understanding of what it means to see and to know. He made his drawing less rich in detail to focus on those which served his purpose. In particular, he made the first use of dotted lines in paleontological illustration to render his images dynamic theoretical interpretations rather than static depictions.

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Endeavor
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Paula Findlen
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Let There Be Enlightenment: The Religious and Mystical Sources of Rationality

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According to most scholars, the Enlightenment was a rational awakening, a radical break from a past dominated by religion and superstition. But in Let There Be Enlightenment, Anton M. Matytsin, Dan Edelstein, and the contributors they have assembled deftly undermine this simplistic narrative. Emphasizing the ways in which religious beliefs and motivations shaped philosophical perspectives, essays in this book highlight figures and topics often overlooked in standard genealogies of the Enlightenment. The volume underscores the prominent role that religious discourses continued to play in major aspects of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thought.

The essays probe a wide range of subjects, from reformer Jan Amos Comenius’s quest for universal enlightenment to the changing meanings of the light metaphor, Quaker influences on Baruch Spinoza’s theology, and the unexpected persistence of Aristotle in the Enlightenment. Exploring the emergence of historical consciousness among Enlightenment thinkers while examining their repeated insistence on living in an enlightened age, the collection also investigates the origins and the long-term dynamics of the relationship between faith and reason.

Providing an overview of the rich spectrum of eighteenth-century culture, the authors demonstrate that religion was central to Enlightenment thought. The term "enlightenment" itself had a deeply religious connotation. Rather than revisiting the celebrated breaks between the eighteenth century and the period that preceded it, Let There Be Enlightenment reveals the unacknowledged continuities that connect the Enlightenment to its various antecedents.

Contributors: Philippe Buc, William J. Bulman, Jeffrey D. Burson, Charly Coleman, Dan Edelstein, Matthew T. Gaetano, Howard Hotson, Anton M. Matytsin, Darrin M. McMahon, James Schmidt, Céline Spector, Jo Van Cauter.

 

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Johns Hopkins University Press
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Russia vs. Ukraine: More of the same?

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The aggression that Russia unleashed against Ukraine in 2014 is now well into its fifth year. Unfortunately, Moscow has shown no readiness to end the conflict it keeps simmering in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, let alone address the status of Crimea. Hopes of a year ago that a U.N. peacekeeping force might offer a path out of the Donbas morass have dimmed. It appears the Kremlin will wait another year, until after the presidential and parliamentary elections in Ukraine, to reconsider its policy.

In the meantime, attitudes among Ukrainians toward Russia continue to harden. The country is deepening its links to Europe while severing ties to its eastern neighbor. The longer that Moscow holds off on changing its policy, the more the already wide gulf between Ukraine and Russia will grow.

CONTINUING CONFLICT
Soldiers in Russian-style combat fatigues (but without identifying insignia) seized Crimea in late February 2014. Ukrainians called them “little green men.” Russian President Vladimir Putin denied they were the Russian military. Weeks later, he admitted that they were and awarded their commanders commendations for the seizure.

Little green men appeared again in Donbas, triggering a conflict that has now claimed well more than 10,000 lives. While Moscow has tried to minimize its visible footprint in the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk “People’s Republics,” those entities survive only due to Russian assistance, which comes in the form of funding, leadership, heavy weapons, ammunition and, at times, regular units of the Russian army.

The Minsk II agreement, brokered in 2015 by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and then-French President François Hollande, aimed to end the fighting and provide a path, if less than well-defined, to a settlement of the Donbas conflict. More than three years later, its first two provisions—ceasefire and withdrawal of heavy arms away from the line of contact—have yet to be implemented. Most attribute blame for this failure to Russia and Russian proxy forces.

September 2018 generated hope that a way to resolve the conflict could be found. Mr. Putin suggested that Russia might agree to a U.N. peacekeeping force, though Russian officials envisaged it operating only along the line of conflict and limited to providing protection for Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) monitors.

That kind of mandate seemed overly narrow, and OSCE officials privately indicated that armed escorts would put their monitors at greater risk. Ukrainian officials, including Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, nevertheless indicated a readiness to consider a U.N. peacekeeping force—provided that its mandate was properly structured and that it could relatively quickly expand its area of operations to cover all of occupied Donbas, including the Ukraine-Russia border.

Serious countries have offered to provide troops. Those include Finland, Sweden, and Austria. A peacekeeping force, perhaps complemented by an interim international administration, offers a means to ensure a peaceful and orderly transition of Donbas back to Ukrainian sovereignty. It also offers the Kremlin a face-saving way to extract itself from a conflict that has no goal or end in sight.

ELECTIONS
Some analysts, including Russians, speculated that Mr. Putin might look for a way out after he won reelection in March. That election, however, is long past, and five months have gone by since the Russian president’s inauguration. It may be that the Kremlin has decided to wait until after next year’s elections in Ukraine to use the peacekeeping plan, or some other notion, to produce a settlement in Donbas.

Ukraine’s 2019 calendar has a presidential ballot on March 31 and Rada (parliamentary) elections no later than October. No clear favorite has emerged in either. The Kremlin undoubtedly will seek to influence both elections with money, supportive electronic media, active social media, and cyber operations. The few openly pro-Russian faces that remain in Ukraine, such as Victor Medvedchuk, also will likely help out.

Moscow’s influence campaign faces challenges, however. Ukrainians are on the alert for Russian interference. Moreover, no candidate or party wants a “pro-Moscow” label. And Russia’s occupation of Crimea and part of the Donbas means that a significant portion of the electorate that in the past has been pro-Russian will not be voting.

Russian interference thus may make the Ukrainian elections more chaotic. It will not, however, deliver a pro-Russian president or sizable pro-Russian bloc in the Rada.

IN THE MEANTIME
While the Kremlin continues the simmering conflict in Donbas and waits for change in Kyiv, Ukraine is steadily moving away from Russia.

Opinion polls reflect this. A June survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology showed 47 percent of Ukrainians favoring integration with the European Union, as opposed to 12 percent who supported joining the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union. In a country where the Russian language was once used as commonly as Ukrainian, many today have made the political choice to use Ukrainian.

Big changes are afoot in Ukraine’s religious scene. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate, once the largest in numbers of adherents and parishes, has in recent years lost followers to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyiv Patriarchate. Sometime this fall, the Ukrainian church is expected to gain independent recognition from Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople. That will sever links between the Ukrainian church and Russia. The Russian Orthodox Church bitterly opposes this but appears to have little leverage to stop it.

Ukraine is moving west in economic terms as well. The European Union has displaced Russia to become Kyiv’s largest trading partner. Ukraine-EU trade made up more than 40 percent of Ukraine’s total in 2017. The decline in energy trade has accounted for a big part of the overall drop in Ukraine-Russia trade. Ukraine today imports no natural gas directly from Russia, a striking fact given that in the 1990s some 75 percent of Ukraine’s natural gas came from Russia or from Central Asia via Russia. Any Russian-origin gas that Ukraine now uses comes from Central Europe.

Ukraine is becoming more connected in other ways with the West and less so with Russia. In September, low-cost carrier Ryanair announced connecting flights between Kyiv and 12 European cities. In contrast, there have been no regular direct passenger flights between Ukraine and Russia since late 2015 (a boon for the Minsk airport). Ukraine’s transportation minister, citing Russia’s continuing aggression, this summer suggested ending rail and bus links between the two countries as well.

RUSSIAN INTERESTS
The Kremlin could choose to adopt a course aimed at settling the conflict in Donbas. However, it seems unready to do so. As it continues its present approach, the gulf between Ukraine and Russia continues to widen. While the two will remain neighbors in a geographic sense (you cannot move one or the other), Moscow’s policy makes restoration of good, stable, neighborly relations a more difficult and difficult task.

One has to question whether a policy that drives Ukraine away and presses it closer to the West really is in Russia’s interest. The answer lies in the Kremlin—with Mr. Putin.

This article originally appeared on the Brookings website.

 

 

 

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Steven Pifer
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Research Handbook on Digital Transformations (Book Chapter)

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The digital transition of the world economy is now entering a phase of broad and deep societal impact. While there is one overall transition, there are many different sectoral transformations, from health and legal services to tax reports and taxi rides, as well as a rising number of transversal trends and policy issues, from widespread precarious employment and privacy concerns to market monopoly and cybercrime. This Research Handbook offers a rich and interdisciplinary synthesis of some of the recent research on the digital transformations currently under way.

This comprehensive study contains chapters covering sectoral and transversal analyses, all of which are specially commissioned and include cutting-edge research. The contributions featured are global, spanning four continents and seven different countries, as well as interdisciplinary, including experts in economics, sociology, law, finance, urban planning and innovation management. The digital transformations discussed are fertile ground for researchers, as established laws and regulations, organizational structures, business models, value networks and workflow routines are contested and displaced by newer alternatives.

This book will be equally pertinent to three constituencies: academic researchers and graduate students, practitioners in various industrial and service sectors and policy makers.

Chapter 17 of this book, The Impact of Digital Technologies on Innovation Policy, was written by Shorenstein APARC Research Scholar Kenji Kushida.

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Kenji E. Kushida
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Translating Cultures: Multilingualism and Identity in the Medieval and Early Modern World -- Stanford CMEMS Primary Source Symposium (Day 1 of 2)

Annual Stanford Primary Source Symposium

 

For further information, including the speakers and talk titles, please visit https://cmems.stanford.edu/primary-source-symposium

 

Co-sponsored by the Europe Center, the Department of Religious Studies, the Department of History, the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, the Department of Art & Art History, the Stanford Humanities Center, and Stanford University Libraries.

Stanford Humanities Center
424 Santa Teresa St.

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Luca Scholz

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Former Lecturer in History
Former Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow of the Stanford Humanities Center
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I work on the history of early modern Europe, combining social, legal and intellectual history with spatial and digital methods. My research explores how old-regime societies negotiated freedom of movement and its restriction, how they justified and denounced phenomena like serfdom, and to what extent the spatial make-up of their world differed from ours.

My first book, Porous Order, retraces the history of the modern state’s grasp over flows of goods and people, particularly during the early modern period. After having dug through more than twenty archives between the Alps and the North Sea, I am able to show how travelers, jurists and officials negotiated passage and obstruction on the roads and rivers of the Old Reich, one of the pre-modern world’s most fragmented regions. I do this with particular reference to safe-conduct, that is, the quasi-sovereign right to escort travelers and to levy duties on passing goods and people. My book challenges conventional conceptions of pre-modern statehood, and offers a new account of how early modern polities claimed and disputed rights of passage.

My second project explores the history of the atmosphere in early modernity. With the rise of global history, historians have continuously expanded the spatial scope of their studies in a horizontal movement. In recent decades, however, a growing body of literature has begun to discuss the human exploration of the atmosphere and outer space in a distinctly vertical dynamic. A widespread assumption in this literature is that the history of airspace begins with the history of aviation. My project combines archival research, text mining, and GIS to show to that the human engagement with airspace has a longer history.

I use geospatial and distant reading approaches to explore phenomena that escape the grasp of conventional scholarship. I have completed statistical, GIS, and computational training at Heidelberg, Columbia, and Stanford. Within Stanford’s Spatial History Project, I lead a digital mapping project that uses GIS and other digital tools to create new maps of old-regime Europe. I also participate in a collaborative digital history project on mobility in the early modern world. My digital research uses advanced computing to gain a more adequate understanding of pre-modern political geography, to retrace the ways in which goods and people travelled through the physical landscape, and to uncover broad spatial and temporal trends in intellectual history. I am excited about how digital tools facilitate, complement and transform scholarship in the humanities.

I have designed and taught numerous lecture and seminar classes for undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students at Stanford, Berlin, and Florence, on different aspects of of early modern history, on spatial history and on the digital humanities. I also acted as co-director of Stanford’s Digital Humanities Graduate Fellowship Program.

I am a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow and a lecturer at Stanford University. I earned a PhD in History from the European University Institute, a MA in History from the École des hautes études en sciences sociales and University of Heidelberg, as well as a BA in Economics from that same university. Before moving to California, I taught at the Free University of Berlin. I have also been a visiting scholar at the University of Saint Andrews and at Columbia University.

 

Affiliated Lecturer at The Europe Center
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