Borders and population growth: Evidence from a century of border regime changes on the Austrian-Czech border.

The files in this directory contain the replication package for the following publication: Coufalová, Lucie, et al. (2024) Borders and population growth: Evidence from a century of border regime changes on the Austrian-Czech border. MUNI ECON Working Paper, 2024. No. 2024-03.

We analyze the impacts of three major unexpected border regime changes that occurred during the course of 20th century on population growth along the Austrian-Czech border. Using historical municipal-level census data reaching back to 1880, we find no effects of the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1919) but strong and oppositely signed effects of the drawing (1948) and the fall (1989) of the Iron Curtain in both countries. Our findings indicate that border regimes affect population growth via economic as well as non-economic mechanisms.

- The file history_replication_fin.do is the stata analysis file. It reproduces all tables with table numbers identical to the numbering in the document. It also produces data for maps and figures. To draw the maps, you will need an appropriate shape file (available at https://www.data.gv.at for Austria and https://geoportal.cuzk.cz/ for the Czech Republic).
To run the program, you will need the data file (hist_finest.dta) and to adjust the path in the first program line.
- The file historyout. smcl is the log file of this program and shows the output produced from the *.do file. It serves documentation and readability purposes only.
- The file hist_finest.dta is the data file. It contains the indicators collected. The table below provides the variable names and codes in that data (along with some descriptive statistics).