Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/235286 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 8916
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
We study the role of professional networks in facilitating the escape of persecuted academics from Nazi Germany. From 1933, the Nazi regime started to dismiss academics of Jewish origin from their positions. The timing of dismissals created individual-level exogenous variation in the timing of emigration from Nazi Germany, allowing us to estimate the causal effect of networks for emigration decisions. Academics with ties to more colleagues who had emigrated in 1933 or 1934 (early émigrés) were more likely to emigrate. The early émigrés functioned as “bridging nodes” that helped other academics cross over to their destination. Furthermore, we provide some of the first empirical evidence of decay in social ties over time. The strength of ties also decays across space, even within cities. Finally, for high-skilled migrants, professional networks are more important than community networks.
Subjects: 
professional networks
high-skilled emigration
Nazi Germany
Jewish academics
universities
JEL: 
I20
I23
I28
J15
J24
N30
N34
N40
N44
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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