As seldom before, the current war in Ukraine has seen the use of World War II analogies by belligerents and also some Western non-belligerents. They thereby follow in the footsteps of such political leaders as Anthony Eden, Margaret Thatcher, Joseph Stalin, or John F. Kennedy. Indeed, statesmen...

Three years of war, sanctions and Russia's isolation from the global community have changed its economy in many ways. Some changes such as the degraded business environment and increased government presence in the economy are likely to persist. War has also exacerbated Russia's already poor...

The study of the complex relationship between Italy and the colonial possessions is exemplary for understanding many of the central questions in the history of economic development in Europe and the African continent in the 20th century. War was a persistent factor in the colonial history of...

Die Rüstungsindustrie stand lange Zeit nicht im Fokus der wirtschaftspolitischen Debatte. Der Export von Waffen und Dual-Use-Gütern wird restriktiv gehandhabt. Die Ausgaben für die Ausrüstung der Bundeswehr waren im Vergleich zu anderen Ländern niedrig, was die Branche unter Druck setzte....

This paper studies the long-run effects of government-led construction of manufacturing plants on the regions where they were built and on individuals from those regions. Specifically, we examine publicly financed plants built in dispersed locations outside of major urban centers for security...

Die Rüstungsindustrie stand lange Zeit nicht im Fokus der wirtschaftspolitischen Debatte. Der Export von Waffen und Dual-Use-Gütern wird restriktiv gehandhabt. Die Ausgaben für die Ausrüstung der Bundeswehr waren im Vergleich zu anderen Ländern niedrig, was die Branche unter Druck setzte....

A sharp increase in fixed investment has been a key factor supporting Russia's economy in recent years. This brief highlights the drivers of Russia's recent investment boom. During 2022, the first year of the full-blown war in Ukraine, investment growth was dominated by increased budget...

Despite millions of war widows worldwide, little is known about the economic consequences of being widowed by war. We use life history data from West Germany to show that war widowhood increased women's employment immediately after World War II but led to lower employment rates later in life....

This paper provides an overview of the role of the United States of America (U.S.) Second World War research effort on the direction of innovation, with a particular focus on medical research. It provides an overview of the U.S. wartime research program, reviews quantitative evidence on the...

Under what conditions can legacies of past violence shape political behaviour? We propose a theory of how war victimization defines attitudes over the long run, and how these can be activated by changes in the political environment. We argue that exposure to violence by members of a different...

With 70 million dead, World War II remains the most devastating conflict in history. Of the survivors, millions were displaced, returned maimed from the battlefield, or spent years in captivity. We examine the impact of such wartime experiences on labor market careers and show that they often...

In testimony before Congress in 1969, economist Kenneth Boulding argued that “The war industry is a cancer within the body of American society. It has its own mode of growth, it represents a system which is virtually independent and indeed objectively inimical to the welfare of the American...

This policy brief examines regional economic development in Russia since the brutal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. We focus on the logistics, construction, and industrial sectors as they are closely related to the structural changes in Russia's economy due to the war and sanctions. We...

After the end of the First World War in November 1918, the Allies were involved in a military campaign in the Ottoman lands, leading to a national resistance by Turks that would end in 1923. It is relevant to provide actual information on the outcomes of the Turkish War of Independence, since it...

Chapter One Polycrisis and the Thucydides Trap -- Chapter Two China’s Challenge to the West -- Chapter Three The Collapse of the Centrally Planned Economies and the Expansion of Capitalism -- Chapter Four The Long Wave of Globalisation -- Chapter Five Hyper-Globalisation and the Laws of...

The participation of the United States in World War II led to a substantial mobilization of domestic resources to produce the materiel used on the battlefields of Europe and in the Pacific. We produce new estimates for the impact of war mobilization on long-run economic growth and regional...

Over the last decade, there has been a rapid deterioration in the state of global geopolitics. It is almost as if a new Cold War has begun in the blink of an eye. The emergent Cold War is an enormously significant development that warrants urgent critical investigation. If unreversed, it...

Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. A New World to Explore -- Chapter 3. The Spanish Empire -- Chapter 4. The Spanish Armada -- Chapter 5. The East India Company and the British Empire -- Chapter 6. The American Revolution -- Chapter 7. The Napoleonic Wars -- Chapter 8. The Mexican-American...

In war powers analysis, reliance on the interpretive method of historical practice, also called the “gloss of history,” has made history a technology of the forever war. This approach draws upon the history of U.S. military conflict to interpret the separation of powers, and embeds past...

The article presents an analysis of the amount of defence and security spending that different regions and countries around the world spend from their gross domestic product with accompanying comments on the reasons for their respective level

On the eve of the outbreak of the world conflict, the Ottoman Empire was most similar in some respects to the current European Union, a decadent entity, but after 683 years of domination, with many internal conflicts, with an unreliable army, weighed down by a self-referential bureaucracy and...

Does repression of opposition elites prevent resistance against foreign-imposed regimes? On the one hand, elimination of elites can undermine the opposition's capacity for antiregime resistance. Yet killing opposition elites deprives the new regime of useful human capital. Co-optation of elites...

Der Binnenmarkt ist einer der wichtigsten Errungenschaften der Europäischen Union und er trägt nennenswert zum Wohlstand bei. Tatsächlich findet der überwiegende Teil des Handels der Mitgliedstaaten mit anderen Mitgliedstaaten statt. Zu Beginn der Corona-Pandemie 2020 wurden jedoch...

Can temporary wartime mobilization change the long-run development trajectory of an economy? We study how mobilization for World War II in colonial India influenced its subsequent development. From 1939 to 1945, the British colonial government purchased massive amounts of war materiel within...