Weapons of Mass Production. World War I and the Modernization of the French Economy
Abstract
During World War I, annual government spending in France reached unprecedented levels, accounting for 50 percent of prewar GDP. A significant portion of this spending was allocated to support war industries at a time when the country's industrial cradle in the northeast was unavailable for production. Using original archival data on war procurement contracts, we examine whether these substantial but temporary wartime industrial investments fostered the modernization of the French economy in the interwar period. We find that départements that benefited from relatively greater wartime industrial investment experienced a sustained postwar expansion of their manufacturing sector. This expansion was driven by a reallocation of labor and firms toward manufacturing, as well as increased industrial concentration.
About this workshop
The Public Governance workshop is an online seminar series focused on state of art research in political economy that uses non-traditional data and data-intensive methods.
The workshop gives a platform for the research on the role of governance in designing and developing better policies. Key features are the political environment, the role of the media, the engagement of stakeholders such as civil society and firms, the market structure and level of competition, and the independence of public regulators, among others. Particular emphasis is placed on research with NLP methods due to the proven usefulness of transforming text into data for further econometric analysis.
Periodicity: Mondays from 17h30 to 19h.