542/2021 Sascha O. Becker, Sharun Mukand, Volker Lindenthal and Fabian Waldinger

We study the role of professional networks in facilitating emigration of Jewish academics dismissed from their jobs by the Nazi government. We use individual-level exogenous variation in the timing of dismissals to estimate the causal effect of networks. Academics with more ties to early émigrés (emigrated 1933-1934) were more likely to emigrate. Early émigrés functioned as “bridging nodes” that facilitated emigration to their own destination. We also distinguish between three kinds of social networks – family, community, or professional networks and study their relative importance. Lastly, we provide some of the first empirical evidence of decay in social ties over time.

Culture, Behaviour and Development