Historical Political Economy of World War 2 in France – POLECOWW2

The purpose of this interdisciplinary project is to study the socio-demographic, economic, and political consequences of the World War II in France. To this end, we will use historical quantitative data, and methods from both political science and economics. Distinguishing short-term and long-term impacts, we focus on three dimensions of the World War II: a foreign occupation and internal violence, an international war of liberation, and, finally, elites’ behaviors and institutions changes. According to the literature studying conflict in other context, conflicts impact economic and human capital, social capital, trust in institution and interpersonal trust, legitimacy of politicians and elite, and gender inequalities. To empirically study these potential impacts in France after World War II, we exploit various sources of data, and we plan to collect data dealing with the intensity and the spatial disparity of the various dimensions of the War in France and relate them to various post-war measures. In addition to previous monographic and qualitative studies, the project will broaden our knowledge of the effects of World War II and provide new empirical materials for historical political economy. We will consider the second world war in France at various geographic level and period of time to gauge its impacts on inequality within and between areas. In addition to spatial and time variations, the project aims at studying inequalities as a whole, should they be inter-generational or gender-based.