Immigration and the Diffusion of Technology: The Huguenot Diaspora in Prussia

Abstract

This paper analyzes long-term effects of skilled-worker immigration on productivity for the Huguenots migration to Prussia. We combine Huguenot immigration lists from 1700 with Prussian firm-level data on the value of inputs and outputs in 1802 in a unique data base. In 1685, religious persecution drove highly skilled Huguenots out of France into backward Brandenburg-Prussia where they were channeled into towns to compensate population losses due to plagues during the Thirty Years’ War. Exploiting this settlement pattern in an instrumental-variable approach, we still find causal effects of Huguenot settlement on the productivity of textile manufactories hundred years after their immigration.