Words at War: The Ship / From the Land of the People / Prisoner of silent Japs
Massacre memories sales of German cars and EZ crisis in Greece.
EZ crisis increased North-South conflict between rescue providers and beneficiaries in particular between Germany and Greece This column shows proof that political conflicts directly translates into loss of market share for German automakers Greece in particular in areas where massacres German armed forces committed during World War II Six decades later, memories of the conflicts are never far from the surface in Europe.
When Angela Merkel visited Athens earlier this year, local protesters upset over austerity measures and alleged German domination she portrayed on placards wearing Nazi uniforms Cypriots protesting against the terms of their bailout countries have shown EU stars around a swastika As the European debt crisis spreads, protests against austerity have become more frequent and often violent Lynn, 2010 in southern Europe the use of symbols of Nazi era has become part of protests against the policies of Germany in Europe, noting that the protesters see as clear parallel between the present and the past in times of crisis, European policy is often viewed through the prism of history in this case the German history of military aggression and war crimes.
In our working paper, we examine empirically whether a confluence between the past and the present conflict can affect consumer behavior are analyzed sales of German cars in Greece after the outbreak of the debt crisis in times of political conflict the market share of German brands especially declines in areas where the German armed forces committed massacres during the Second World war, sales of German cars fell much more than in the rest of Greece.
Forced into a bailout sequence due to the debt crisis, Greece had to accept severe spending cuts in exchange for IMF financing and the EU, Germany has taken the lead in insisting on austerity .
German newspapers and politicians expressed their contempt on fiscal fraud and alleged moral shortcomings of the Greek people A German newspaper has suggested that Greece sell its islands; another showed Aphrodite with a middle finger raised on the cover In February 2012, the Greek president complained his country insulted by the German Finance Minister.
To measure political conflicts, we use a number of newspaper articles on the subject, the Kathimerini Greek newspaper We focus on periods of coverage of public spats spiked 1 shows the evolution of our indicator There are three periods when the conflict was particularly intense.
September 2011, when the German finance minister said it was up to Greece to decide whether it wanted to stay in the euro.
January 2012, when a German plan to take budgetary control far Greece has failed.
May 2012, when the Greek national elections were held, with much of campaign on an anti-bailout platform.
A measure of Google search terms gives a similar picture.
Figure 1. Two measures of German-Greek political conflict.
Fifty civilians for every German soldier percent for all officers These are quotas to conduct retaliatory fire after the partisan attacks, as indicated by the German Armed Forces High Command Mazower 1995 rules applied to all areas of the German occupation, but they are not implemented with some degree of consistency instead, depending on the country and the commander in question, reprisals have ranged from modest punishments to mostly massive attacks on the unfortunate enough civilian population to live near the place where an attack occurred most cases, they were unrelated supporters doctrine of the German army did not seek to punish the guilty, but to discourage people from cooperating with irregulars.
In Russia, Yugoslavia and Greece, the German reprisals were common and severe of Crete where the Wehrmacht committed the first massacres of villagers who resisted their advance reprisals spread to mainland Greece In a famous case, the Kommeno village near the Gulf of Arta was attacked by a unit of the German army in the autumn of 1943 had been received supporters observed the food in the village; German reprisals were designed to discourage such support In total, 317 Greeks were killed, including 172 women and 13 children.
While partisan attacks intensified towards the end of the war, the villages all over Greece were burned to the ground the Greek Ministry of Interior listed the martyr cities after the end of the war to include a town or village had to be either completely destroyed as a result of a criminal or fire bombing, lost 10 of its population in mass executions, or respond to a combination of these criteria Sixty-two cities on this list have been retaliated by German army, most of them witnessed mass executions as Figure 2 shows, martyr cities are in Greece.
As the bad news about the state of the Greek economy accumulated after 2008, car sales have collapsed is the outbreak of the crisis and public German-Greek conflict in particular lead to the decline in market share German producers Since German car producers are heavily concentrated on the top end of the market, we focus on the VW-class producers of small and medium Car companies such as VW, Toyota, Fiat, etc.
The general trend favoring the German producers in Europe over the period as a whole, in particular because a resurgent VW took part of Toyota's market average, in a month without conflict, German car producers in Greece have won 3 1 part market every 12 months by months of conflict, this turns into losses 0 1, a marked change.
Looking at sales of German cars at the prefecture level, we find that there is a marked contrast between the two types of zones People affected by German massacres during World War II saw a rapid decline in the month of conflict of the market share of German cars on average 3 4 percentage points areas that didn t suffer reprisals hardly experienced a change from the German market compared to normal months.
A natural question to ask is how long these effects lasted We examine the cumulative difference in market shares in the German cars and not massacred massacred prefectures over time, and the plot of this side by side indicator from press articles covering German-Greek differential conflict grows with every eruption of political conflict, but there is no quick reversal at the end of our sample period, the cumulative average difference is near two standard deviations equivalent to two percentage points.
Figure 3 relative decline of reprisals from the German market against non-retaliation areas and part of newspaper articles about the German-Greek conflict.
Do consumers actually spend to other brands, or did they simply postpone purchases We find that the prefectures that saw German massacres in 1941-1944 not only buy fewer German cars they also purchased more cars of other manufacturers This shows that the losses in terms of sales German car producers during the months of conflict are not temporary.
Boycotts are among the most common forms of political action, on average, nearly half of the Fortune 50 companies are subject to a kind of boycott at any time Remarkably, evidence that boycotts reduce sales is limited While many American consumers were outraged by France's refusal to support the invasion of Iraq, for example, it is unclear whether they actually reduced their purchases of french products Ashenfelter et al 2007; Michaels and Zhi 2010; Pandya and Venkatesan 2013 We should not be surprised that calls for a boycott are generally ignored Consumers like what they like; deviating from their consumption basket is ideal costly While they want others to punish transgressions, they would ideally like to jump the queue on the boycott of other Sen et al 2001; John and Klein, 2003.
In Marcel Proust In Search of the time lost narrator's childhood memories are brought back by the taste of a madeleine It seems that the bitter taste of the past may have similar effects revived affect purchases of consumer goods such as German cars these results are related to recent theoretical work which show selective, dependent memory context as behavioral biases source Gennaioli and Shleifer 2010 Our study suggests that when the local memory interacts with the current conflict, the problem of collective action boycotts can be overcome memories of the past evil deeds may encourage consumers to bear the costs that would otherwise prevent them from participating in a boycott.
Ashenfelter, Orley Ciccarella, Stephen and Shatz, Howard J 2007, French wine and Boycott US 2003 Is politics really affect trade, NBER Working Paper 13258.
Gennaioli, Nicola and Shleifer, Andrei 2010, which comes to mind, the Quarterly Journal of Economics 125 4 1399 1433.
John, Andrew Klein and Jill 2003 The puzzle Boycott Motivations for consumers purchasing sacrifice, Management Science 49 9 1196 1209 Lynn, Matthew 2010 Bust Greece, the euro and the sovereign debt crisis London Wiley.
Mazower M 1995 Greece Inside Hitler's experience of the occupation 1941-1944 New Haven and London, Yale University Press Michaels, Guy and Zhi Xiaojia 2010 Freedom Fries, American Economic Journal Applied Economics, 2 3 256 81 .
Pandya, Sonal and Venkatesan, Rajkumar 2013 French Roast international conflicts and consumer boycotts show Supermarket scanner data, handout.
Sen, Sankar, Gurhan-Canli, Zeynep and Morwitz Vicki 2001, consumption Withholding A social dilemma perspective on consumer boycotts, Journal of Consumer Research March 28, 399,417.
Young, Brigitte and Semmler, Willi, the crisis of European debt sovereign Germany Blame, German Society Policy 29 January 2011.
Massacre memories sales of German cars and EZ crisis in the portal of the policy of Greece VOX CEPR, massacre memories, German.