DP20492 Escaping Labor Scarcity: Innovation and Human Capital after WW1 in France

• Antonin Bergeaud Jean-Baptiste Chaniot Clément Malgouyres
26 Jul 2025

We use quasi-random local variation in the number of young men who died as a result of World War I to estimate the impact of this demographic shock on innovation and structural change in France. Our analysis shows that excess mortality led to an increase in patenting activity in counties with high pre-war education levels, driven predominantly by innovations in labor-saving technologies. Our estimates imply that an additional 6,000 patents were filed in the 15 years following the war, amounting roughly to the average annual number of patents filed pre-war. We find a positive association between war-related mortality and wage growth as well as with the adoption of machines in the agricultural sector, providing additional evidence that incentives to escape labor scarcity are driving the innovation response to mortality.