Discrimination, Managers, and Firm Performance: Evidence from “Aryanizations” in Nazi Germany

We are particularly grateful to John List, Erik Hurst, Dirk Jenter, and Daniel Sturm, as well as Nicholas Bloom, Maristella Botticini, Kerwin Charles, Neale Mahoney, Alan Manning, Stephan Maurer, Filippo Mezzanotti, Stefan Nagel, Yona Rubinstein, Raffaella Sadun, Heather Sarsons, Claudia Steinwender, John Van Reenen, and many seminar audiences for helpful comments. We thank our research assistants Matthias Bing, Le Van Cao, Thomas Decker, Katharina Drechsler, Miguel Fajardo-Steinhauser, Felicitas Filsinger, Lukas Franz, David Full, Sebastian Hager, Hannes Halder, Robert Johannes, Kenan Jusufovic, Katharina Knuth, Tobias Nowacki, Franz Oertel, Constanze Vorrath, Saskia Wendt, and Stefan Wies for their outstanding work. We thank Dieter Ziegler, Martin Muenzel, and Paul Windolf for generously sharing data on senior managers in Germany. Waldinger gratefully acknowledges start-up funding from the Innovation Policy working group at the NBER and funding from ERC Starting Grant No. 335573. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.