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Does armed conflict reduce trade, even in noncombat areas, through the destruction of intergroup social capital? We analyze Ukrainian trade transactions before and after the 2014 Russia-Ukraine conflict. In a difference- in-differences framework, we find that Ukrainian firms from districts with fewer ethnic Russians experienced a deeper decline in trade with Russia. This decline is economically significant, persistent, and can be explained by erosion of intergroup trust. Affected Ukrainian firms suffered a decrease in performance and diverted trade to other countries. Our results suggest that, through social effects, conflict can be economically damaging even away from combat areas.

Throughout its history the concept of \"Uzbekness,\" or more generally of a Turkic-speaking sedentary population, has continuously attracted members of other groups to join, as being Uzbek promises opportunities to enlarge ones social network. Accession is comparatively easy, as Uzbekness is grounded in a cultural model of territoriality, rather than genealogy, as the basis for social attachments. It acknowledges regional variation and the possibility of membership by voluntary decision. Therefore, the boundaries of being Uzbek vary almost by definition, incorporating elements of local languages, cultural patterns and social organization. This book combines an historical analysis with thorough ethnographic field research, looking at differences in the conceptualization of group boundaries and the social practices they entail. It does so by analysing decision-making processes by Uzbeks on the individual as well as cognitive level and the political configurations that surround them.

This paper examines how high-skilled immigrants contribute to knowledge diffusion using a rich data set of Russian scientists and US citations to Soviet-era publications. Analysis of a panel of US cities and scientific fields shows that citations to Soviet-era work increased significantly with the arrival of immigrants. A difference-in-differences analysis with matched paper pairs also shows that after Russian scientists moved to the United States, citations to their Soviet-era papers increased relative to control papers. Both strategies reveal scientific field–specific effects. Ideas in high-impact papers and papers previously accessible to US scientists were the most likely to “spill over” to natives.

Knowledge producers conducting research on a particular set of questions may respond to supply and demand shocks by shifting resources to a different set of questions. Cognitive mobility measures the transition from one location to another in idea space. We examine the cognitive mobility flows unleashed by the influx of Soviet mathematicians into the United States after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The data reveal that American mathematicians moved away from fields that received large numbers of Soviet émigrés. Diminishing returns in specific research areas, rather than beneficial human capital spillovers, dominated the cognitive mobility decisions of knowledge producers.

Eastern European museums represent traumatic events of World War II, such as the Siege of Leningrad, the Warsaw Uprisings, and the Bombardment of Dresden, in ways that depict the enemy in particular ways. This image results from the interweaving of historical representations, cultural stereotypes and beliefs, political discourses, and the dynamics of exhibition narratives. This book presents a useful methodology for examining museum images and provides a critical analysis of the role historical museums play in the contemporary world. As the catastrophes of World War II still exert an enormous influence on the national identities of Russians, Poles, and Germans, museum exhibits can thus play an important role in this process.

Immigration increased Israel's population by 12 percent between 1990 and 1994, after emigration restrictions were lifted in an unstable Soviet Union. Following the influx, occupations that employed more immigrants had substantially lower native wage growth and slightly lower native employment growth than others. However, because the immigrants' postmigration occupational distribution was influenced by relative labor market conditions across occupations in Israel, Ordinary Least Squares estimates of the immigrants' impact on those conditions are biased. Instrumental Variables estimation, exploiting information on the immigrants' former occupations abroad, suggests no adverse impact of immigration on native outcomes.

Political trust is an essential ingredient for the functioning of democracies. Cultural theory hypothesizes that trust in political institutions originates in deeply rooted and long-standing cultural norms, which are transmitted through early-life socialization and thus are exogenous to political institutions. By contrast, institutional theory views political trust as a direct consequence of institutional performance. This paper studies political trust in Europe within a quasi-experimental framework of migration. Results using European Social Survey data by itself or merged with the Integrated Values Surveys suggest that Russian-born migrants exposed to Western European institutions have higher probability of political trust than Russian-born migrants in Eastern Europe.

Are ethnic minorities more likely to emigrate from the new EU Member States? Who are the potential minority and majority migrants? This paper studies emigration intentions of the Russian speaking minority in Latvia after the 2004 EU enlargement. Using a survey on emigration intentions conducted in 2005, I show that the minority is more likely to emigrate than the majority. For the Russian speakers, higher education levels tend to be associated with higher probability of emigration, suggesting a minority brain drain. These findings can be explained by (1) linguistic and citizenship policies potentially disadvantaging Russian speakers in the Latvian labour market; (2) family migration capital; and (3) low acceptance of the way in which minority education is provided.

A commonly cited reason for increasing high-skill immigration to the United States is the perceived positive impact that such immigrants would have on the course of US science. While it is true that scientific research is particularly important for long-term economic well-being, and while it is also true that immigrants have historically accounted for a disproportionate share of US scientific output, the causal impact of an increase in the number of high-skill immigrants on US science is not obvious. An influx of new knowledge and knowledge-generating workers may generate knowledge spillovers: the productivity-enhancing peer effects that must be present if high-skill immigration is to have beneficial long-run effects. However, scientists must also compete for scarce resources such as jobs, journal space, and attention in order for their research to be produced, disseminated, and used. This paper reviews the evidence we report in recent work (Borjas and Doran 2012, 2014) that simultaneously addresses both of these conflicting forces. The research uses the “natural experiment” created by the collapse of the Soviet Union, which led to the largest sudden influx of scientific personnel and ideas into the United States since World War II. In this context, there is little evidence of improved productivity among preexisting scientists after a sizable supply and idea shock.

This intensively researched urban study dissects Russian Imperial and early Soviet rule in Islamic Central Asia from the diverse viewpoints of tsarist functionaries, Soviet bureaucrats, Russian workers, and lower-class women as well as Muslim notables and Central Asian traders. Jeff Sahadeo's stimulating analysis reveals how political, social, cultural, and demographic shifts altered the nature of this colonial community from the tsarist conquest of 1865 to 1923, when Bolshevik authorities subjected the region to strict Soviet rule. In addition to placing the building of empire in Tashkent within a broader European context, Sahadeo's account makes an important contribution to understanding the cultural impact of empire on Russia's periphery.