Minorities, Human Capital and Long-Run Development: Persistence of Armenian and Greek Influence in Turkey
Journal: RePEc: Research Papers in Economics
Year: 2017

We study the long-term economic legacy of highly-skilled minorities a century after their wholesale expulsion. Using mass expulsions of Armenian and Greek communities of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century as a unique natural experiment of history, we show that districts with greater presence of Armenian and Greek minorities at the end of the 19th century are systematically more densely populated, more urbanized, and more developed today. Results are robust to accounting for an extensiv