Thank you very much! I am very happy to hear you find the paper interesting!

Thank you for reading. There is much more on the paper. Full draft at:
jkastis.github.io/yanniskastis...

More of my research at:
www.yanniskastis.com

👉 3rd finding: Local economic conditions determine how knowledge brought by immigrants is applied in the host country.

1) Jewish tailors applied expertise to scale-up ready-to-wear in England, where sewing machines were available.
2) Not in Russia, where technology was lacking.

👉 2nd finding: Immigration affects technological change and thus the creation of new production tasks:

1) Bespoke native tailors were displaced.
2) New jobs for natives in tasks emerged with ready-to-wear.

❗️Implications for long-run impact of immigration on native employment.

Evolution of the share of sewing machinists among groups of tailors in England. Jewish immigrants are identified as those born in the Russian Empire.

👉 1st finding: Organizational practices are crucial for technology adoption. Jewish arrivals led to:

1) Increase in machine’s adoption by natives.
2) Natives adopting the new practice.
3) Increase in worker specialization.
4) Faster transition to mass production.

Inflow of Jewish tailors in England between 1881 and 1905.

IV: settlement patterns of Jewish tailors in 1851, before sewing machine's introduction, when garment production was homogeneous.

1) Jewish immigrant tailors settled in districts of London's East End and Leeds.

2) Native tailors concentrated in central London and Manchester.

The empirical analysis is based on:

💡Newly constructed data on production tasks derived with textual analysis from the universe of English census records 1851-1911.

➕ Firm-level data to study the impact on firm size.

We study how this shift affected:

📈 The adoption of the sewing machine and the ready-to-wear practice by native tailors.

➡️ The transition of the English tailoring industry to mass production of garments.

Upon arrival in England Jewish tailors combined:

⚙️ Available sewing machines with

💡 Organizational practice based on division of labor

👉 to scale-up and automate production of ready-to-wear garments.

Back in the Russian Empire:

❌ Sewing machines were not yet available.

👔 Jewish tailors specialized in standardized production of ready-to-wear garments.

👇Required greater division of labor into specialized tasks than bespoke production.

Jewish tailors arrived in England when:

👔 Garment production was predominantly bespoke.

⚙️ Native tailors were using sewing machines - introduced in the 1860s - to improve individual productivity.

The paper - w/@hillaryvipond.bsky.social - tackles the endogeneity problem by:

💡Examining a shift in organizational practices in the English tailoring industry.

👉 Prompted by the arrival of Jewish tailors who fled pogroms in the Russian Empire between 1881 and 1905.

1⃣ Efficient practices often emerge through trial and error after new technologies are introduced ➡️ Difficult to establish a causal link.

2⃣ Standard data rarely identify the specific technologies and organizational practices used in production.

The idea that there are gains from organizing production efficiently dates back to Adam Smith’s division of labor.

❌ Yet, little is known on the role of organizational practices in driving technology adoption.

➡️This is due to 2 challenges: