The Refugee’s Dilemma – Jewish Outmigration from Nazi Germany
By the end of 1938, more than two-thirds of the Jewish community was still located in Germany. In this paper we estimate the push and pull factors involved in the outmigration of Jews facing persecution in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1942. We build a structural model of migration under uncertainty on the life threat and then we perform counterfactual policy experiments in order to quantify how migration restrictions in destination countries affected the fate of Jews. Our analysis particularly highlights the role of social learning and information spillovers by assessing how migration outflows within social networks provided a signal of the severity of the threat to the peers. The empirical investigation makes use of a unique dataset that records the migration history of almost the entire universe of Jews living in Germany over the period.
This seminar was originally published in Novafrica.org.

NOVAFRICA Knowledge Center
NOVAFRICA is a knowledge center created by the Nova School of Business and Economics of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa in 2011. Its mission is to produce expertise with an impact on business and economic development in Africa. A particular focus is on Portuguese-speaking Africa, i.e., Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and Sao Tome and Principe.
Website
Refugees: In desperate need
Cátia Batista, scientific director of Nova SBE NOVAFRICA Knowledge Center, was invited by SIC Notícias to express her opinion on the irregular migration to Portugal.
Learn more
Diffusion of Rival Information in the Field
Under the theme of Economic Development in Africa, the NOVAFRICA@Nova SBE seminar series hosts a variety of international speakers. This seminar invited Inês Vilela, Royal University of London (Alumna Nova SBE).
Learn more
American lessons
When they are excluded, people do not change to be included, they become more radical, they stop listening and start working in a closed circuit. It is a very human reaction to denying reality.
Learn more