War, Coal, and Forced Labor: Assessing the Impact of Prisoner-of-War Employment on Coal Mine Productivity in World War I Germany

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: University of Regensburg
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0507
• DOI: 10.1017/S0022050721000310
• 发表日期: 2021
• 页码: 763-791
• 关键词: italian prisoners; slavery; policies

摘要

This paper assesses the causal relationship between POW assignments and labor productivity for a vital sector of the German World War I economy, namely coal mining. Prisoners of war (POWs) provided significant labor. Combining data on all Ruhr mines with a treatment-effects approach, I find that POW employment alone accounted for 36 percent of the average POW-employing mine's annual productivity decline over wartime. Estimates also suggest that the representative POW's productivity averaged 32 percent of the representative regular miner's productivity and that POWs' contribution to wartime coal output amounted to 3.9 percent. Violence did not serve as a powerful work incentive.