Tom Raster

Welcome to my website!

I am an Assistant Professor at LSE.

Based at the Department of Economic History, my research is at the intersection of economic history, spatial economics, trade, and labour economics. My current projects mainly focus on trade, innovation, forced labour, and migration, often involving Eastern Europe. I am particularly passionate about collecting and leveraging large-scale archival data.

I obtained my PhD in economics at Paris School of Economics in June 2024, supervised by Thomas Piketty

I am a fellow at Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science, LSE's Historical Economic Demography Group, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, Institut Convergences Migrations, and the World Inequality Lab. From 2021 to 2023, I was a research and teaching fellow at the Harvard Economics Department. In February 2023, I visited Princeton.

My CV can be found here.

Do not hesitate to reach out at t.raster@lse.ac.uk.

Upcoming Presentations

Working Papers

Breaking the ice: The persistent effects of pioneers on trade relationships

This paper provides the first causal evidence of the effect of individual pioneers — first movers on trade links — on aggregate trade. I collect detailed data on all 1.4 million voyages between Baltic Sea ports and the rest of the world from 1500 until the 1850s, including 47,000 pioneering voyages that first connected two towns. I study the effect of pioneering on subsequent trade in a gravity model of yearly port-pair trade and instrument pioneering at the granular voyage level with (i) quasi-random en-route encounters with captains from new ports, and (ii) rerouting due to the unpredictable obstruction of previous destinations by sea ice. I find that 10% of total trade value is due to recent pioneering. A single pioneering voyage increases town exports by 25–33% for the 12% links that persist. Survival is higher for pioneered ports that are more distant from the origin port or existing trade partners in terms of kilometers, product mix, religion, or language. However, pioneers tend to select less distant ports. Therefore, returns are greatest when sea ice removes this selection and forces pioneers to experiment with exogenously determined ports. Pioneering spills over onto other traders, reducing the private returns of pioneers. This raises concerns about insufficient ex-ante pioneering and underlines the importance of policies that foster pioneering, particularly with distant destinations.

Paper, Animations, Tweet

presented at: Harvard, Princeton, Economic History Association 2023 annual meeting, CEPII, PSE, Collège de France, AMSE, ASREC 2024 (Chapman U)

coverage: Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality

Contagious coercion: The effect of plagues on serfdom in the Baltics

Labor scarcity is the main hypothesized determinant of labor coercion Domar (1970), however, its effects are theoretically ambiguous and remain empirically untested. This paper provides the first causal estimate of the effect of labor scarcity on labor coercion. I obtain quasi-exogenous variation in labor scarcity from immense spatial dispersion in deaths from three plagues in the Baltics (1605-6, 1657, 1710-2), which I show is uncorrelated to a host of local, pre-plague characteristics. To measure the intensity of labor coercion, I hand-collect thousands of serf labor contracts in Estonia, which capture the work obligations of serfs. I find that labor scarcity substantially increases coercion à la Domar (1970). Investigating mechanisms, I find that this effect is enhanced by the lack of outside options and increased labor monopsony power, in line with theoretical models. Investigating the consequences of (labor-scarcity instrumented) coercion, I find negative effects on education and increased migration. Taken together, these findings highlight the conditions under which labor scarcity raises coercion and provide suggestive evidence of why it does not in other cases (e.g., in Western Europe following the Black Death).

Paper

presented at: LSE, Princeton, Harvard, PSE, EHESS, Caltech Early Modern Group, LEAP*

From Vagabonds to Virtues: The Ideological Roots of Entrepreneurship

with Lars Harhoff Andersen (U Copenhagen)

The admiration of business people and the Bourgeoisie has been suggested as a crucial driver of entrepreneurship and innovation, as individuals aspire to emulate the achievements of those with high social status (McCloskey, 2010). We test this theory by devising a new measure of bourgeois values from first names in the US census, which we find to be strongly correlated with entrepreneurship and income. For identification, we leverage the ad hoc road trips of two prominent public exponents of bourgeois values in the early 20th century: Henry Ford and Thomas Edison. Referring to themselves as the Vagabonds, Edison and Ford quasi-exogenously exposed different localities to prominent bourgeois role models across several road trips between 1918 and 1924. Visits by the Vagabonds cause an increase in our measure of bourgeois values that, in turn, increase income and the frequency of entrepreneurship. Our findings suggest that culture and values drive innovation and that even moderate shocks to cultural values can have lasting effects.

Paper

presented at: ASREC 2023 (Harvard), PE Workshop (Harvard)

Serfs and the market: Second Serfdom and the East-West goods exchange

Using novel shipment-level data on maritime trade between 1579 and 1856, this paper documents the evolution in grain exports from Western to Eastern Europe and the rise of unfree labor in the former. Hypotheses first formulated more than 60 years ago, that export opportunities spurred labor coercion, motivate the exploration of this relationship. A new dataset of key labor legislation dates in the Baltic area captures de-jure unfree labor (e.g. serfdom or mobility bans). We also capture de-facto variation in coercion using existing data on coercion proxies (land holdings, serf manumission and/or wages) in Denmark, Prussia and Scania and novel household-level corvée data in Estonia. Our findings suggest that increases in grain prices and exports to the West happen, in many instances, concurrently with increases in de-jure and de-facto coercion in the East; thus, providing support for the hypothesis. Specifically, we observe that locations with better export potential see higher de-facto labor coercion; a finding that cannot be reconciled with existing models which predict less coercion in the proximity of cities due to outside options. We rationalize these findings in a new, open-economy labor coercion model that explains why foreign demand for grain is particularly likely to foster coercion. Our empirics may also be interpreted as evidence that Scania’s opening of the land market to peasants allowed them to benefit from trade and reduced labor coercion even in the absence of any coercion-constraining labor policies. It is hoped that this research and the data it contributes provides new conceptual and empirical approaches to understanding past and present unfree labor that may also focus more closely on the broader political economy.

Paper

presented at: WEAST 2019 (Helsinki)

Work in Progress (selected)

Cabotage, Costs, and Climate

with Tillman Graff (Harvard)

We estimate a structural model to quantify how the EU’s cabotage rules affect costs and CO2 emissions, mainly by forcing trucks to run empty between destinations. EU cabotage rules require truckers to return periodically to their country of origin. Given the large share of truckers in one region, Eastern Europe, this requirement can create inefficiencies. We collaborate with large trucking companies to obtain the first trip-level data on trucking. Preliminary findings indicate that EU cabotage laws lead to substantially more empty running, higher costs, and excess CO2 emissions. For identification, we exploit changes in cabotage rules and traffic-related delays that we observe in driver tracking data and that exogenously bring truckers closer to their cabotage window. Our findings demonstrate the trade-offs between protecting Western European truckers and excess costs and emissions.

Wealth and Elite Networks

I quantify the wealth of noble landowners and (freed) serfs in Estonia and Latvia from the beginning of the colonization by Baltic Germans in the 1200s to the end of the first period of independence in 1939. To this end, I collect extensive data on the landholdings of individual Baltic Germans and their families and show how their wealth recovers following shocks (plagues, wars, and conquests). I also document the slow rise in landownership among formerly enserfed ethnic Estonians and Latvians following the abolition of serfdom in 1816-9. The wealth gap between Baltic Germans and ethnic Estonians and Latvians only significantly closed following land reforms after the independence from Russia in 1918-9.

Victory over Vodka? The Consequences of the Russian Empire's Spirits Monopoly

with Mariya Sakharova (AMSE)

Education and Economic Outcomes in the Long Run: France 1789-2024

with Amory Gethin (World Bank)

The Hanseatic League: Breakdown of a Cartel

The Hanseatic League was a large merchant guild that existed from the 12th century until its last meeting in 1669. The Sound Toll allows me to study the cheating of individual captains on Hanseatic statutes. Cheating occurs when (i) non-Hanse captains sail to Hanse towns and (ii) Hanse captains sail to non-Hanse trade routes. This analysis of each individual shipment provides unique evidence of the causes of the League’s decline through the lens of cartel theory.

presented at: Economic History Association 2017 annual meeting, University of Groningen

The long-run political effects of refugees: Evidence from post-WWII Germany

with Maximilian Dörfler and Li Yang (ZEW)

We study the political consequences of German WWII refugees who were expelled from Eastern Europe. Using county-level data, we show that the (instrumented) presence of WWII refugees leads to significantly more far-right voting today. A new identifier in large survey data allows us to decompose this effect for refugees and their offspring and non-refugees and their children. We show that WWII refugees themselves vote less for the far-right and view immigration more favorably. We find opposite effects for the children of refugees, non-refugees, and non-refugee children. Our findings demonstrate that within-country displacement can lead to a persistent backlash.

presented at: PE Gov (Harvard)

Publication

Liquidity Constraints and Willingness to Pay for Solar Lamps and Water Filters in Jakarta

with Robert Lensink (U Groningen) & Angelique Timmer (Ivy)

The European Journal of Development Research (2018), 30, 577-587

In this study, using the Becker–DeGroot–Marschak mechanism, we assess the Willingness to Pay for water filters and solar lamps in Indonesia. The study shows that credit constraints are important determinants of the low levels of WTP and low adoption rates of preventative health technologies. Providing women with an option to spread out the payments for these products over 50 weekly periods more than doubles the maximum WTP.

Paper

Seminars & Conferences

2025

Applied Lunch (PSE) • Yale • ASREC (George Mason U) • Institute of Historical Research (U London) • EHS • LSE-PSE Economic History Workshop* • Economic and Social History Research Seminar (Oxford)* • Economic History Workshop (Birmingham)* • Research Colloquium – Social and Economic History (HU Berlin)* ⋄ XX World Economic History Congress (Lund)*

(* marks scheduled)

2024

Boston U • CUNEF • LSE • NHH • Southern Denmark U • Trinity College Dublin • UNSW Sydney • U Nottingham • U Oxford • Caltech Early Modern Group • ASREC (Chapman U) • LEAP • Kiel Institute for the World Economy • OWL (Oxford, Warwick & LSE) Workshop • WEast (Dublin)

2023

Grad. Labor (Princeton) • Grad. Trade (Princeton) • Applied Lunch (PSE) • ASREC (Harvard) • International Economics Lunch (Harvard) • Economic History Workshop (Harvard) • Institut Convergences Migrations (× 2) • ENS • Eurasia Economic History Workshop (U Chicago) • CEPII • Economic History Association (Pittsburgh) • AMSE (× 2)

2022

International Economics Lunch (Harvard) • Applied Lunch (PSE) • PE workshop (Harvard) • Economic History Workshop (Harvard) • XIX World Economic History Congress

2021

Atelier Simiand (PSE) • Pol Econ Tea (×2 • Harvard) • Economic History Workshop (Harvard)

2020

Applied Lunch (PSE) • GSIE (PSE/Université Paris 1)

2019

Baltic Connections (U Helsinki)

2018

Economics-Econometrics-Finance seminar (U Groningen) • Economic History Association (San Jose)

Teaching & Advising

LSE:

PhD co-advising:
1. - Eden Lumerman
  - Johann Ohler

(LSE students, please schedule office hours on LSE Student Hub)

Quantitative Analysis in Economic History (EH402) – course convenor
Historical Economic Geography: Cities, Markets and Regions (EH308) – course convenor
Dissertation (EH498) – main advisor
Dissertation in Economic or Social History (EH390) – main advisor
Historical Analysis of Economic Change (EH401) – selected lecture
Approaches to Economic and Social History (EH520) – selected lecture

Harvard University:

International Political Economy (evaluation: 4.89/5.00)

University of British Columbia:

Microeconomics (evaluation: 4.5/5.00)
Understanding Globalization (evaluation: 4.6/5.00)

University of Groningen (TAs are generally not evaluated):

Asset Pricing & Capital Budgeting
International Economics
Mathematics I
Mathematics II
Statistics

Data & Useful Links

Data:

Baltic Economic History Database

(to come)

Historic Baltic Sea ice data

Complete database of freezing and ice breakup collected at sea ice monitoring stations and ports. (available upon request)

Links:

News

French economic history newsletter: Send an email to sympa@groupes.renater.fr with the subject line: subscribe histoire_eco

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