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Fickle Fossils. Economic Growth, Coal and the European Oil Invasion, 1900-2015

  • Fossil fuels have shaped the European economy since the industrial revolution. In this paper, we analyse the effect of coal and oil on long-run economic growth, exploiting variation at the level of European NUTS-2 and NUTS-3 regions over the last century. We show that an “oil invasion” in the early 1960s turned regional coal abundance from a blessing into a curse, using new detailed data on carboniferous strata as an instrument. Moreover, we show that human capital accumulation was the key mechanism behind this reversal of fortune. Not only did former coal regions fail to accumulate sufficient levels of human capital, but pre-industrial human capital helped declining regions to reinvent themselves. Without sufficient human capital, fossil fuels did never generate sustainable growth.

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Metadaten
Document Type:Working Paper
Language:English
Author(s):Miriam Fritzsche, Nikolaus Wolf
Contributing Corporation:Berlin School of Economics
Parent Title (English):Berlin School of Economics Discussion Papers
Hertie Collections (Serial Number):Berlin School of Economics Discussion Papers (3)
Publication year:2022
Publishing Institution:Hertie School
Number pages:34
Related URL:https://berlinschoolofeconomics.de/insights/bse-discussion-papers
DOI:https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-4652
Contributing Corporation:Berlin School of Economics
Release Date:2022/11/29
Tag:Coal, Oil Invasion, Education, Reinvention, Economic Growth
Edition:No. 3
Hertie School Research:BerlinSchoolOfEcon_Discussion_Papers
Licence of document (German):Creative Commons - CC BY - 4.0 International
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