Luis Bosshart

Academy Scholar
Harvard University, Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies
lbosshart@fas.harvard.edu

I work on political economy and study how institutions shape political and economic development over time. I’m currently an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. I received my PhD from the London School of Economics in 2025. [CV]

Crisis, State Capacity, and the Rise of Autocracy: A Design-based Analysis of the Thirty Years‘ War, with M. Weigand
Revise and Resubmit, Quarterly Journal of Economics
Abstract
Do wars enable autocracy? We examine how the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48), the largest conflict in pre-modern Europe, gave rise to capable autocracies. We use planned troop movements from secret military communications to estimate the impact of town-level war exposure on the growth of fiscal and military capacity and the dismantling of parliaments. During the war, executive power increased to prevent plunder and coordinate military logistics. After the war, rulers used this capacity to consolidate autocratic rule via propaganda and repression. Pre-existing legal institutions acted as a barrier to war-induced autocracy. With parliaments eliminated, militarized absolutist regimes persisted for centuries and provided fewer public goods. Our findings highlight a dynamic trade-off in the concentration of executive power during crises.

Political Competition and Economic Divergence: Development Before and After the Black Death, with J. Dittmar
Reject and Resubmit, Quarterly Journal of Economics
Abstract [Video]
We document how the Black Death of 1348 interacted with the structure of interstate competition to drive a major divergence in development. We leverage the interaction between the timing of the exogenous labor supply shock and a sharp boundary between the politically concentrated, low competition East and the politically fragmented, high competition West of Europe. Using novel panel data 1200-1800, we find that after the shock, urban construction and the development of city institutions fell by one-third and remained depressed where political competition was low ex ante. This holds (1) comparing neighboring and otherwise similar cities on either side of the boundary, (2) comparing cities subject to the same ruler within states spanning the boundary, and (3) using dynastic shocks as an IV for local political concentration. We show this urban divergence shifted outside options in labor markets and predicts the subsequent institutionalization of serfdom and the spread of farms using labor coercion.

Shifting Norms and Political Demand: Denazification in postwar Germany
Abstract
Can states and societies shift social norms? In a major denazification program, millions of Germans were questioned about their political past by courts. This paper documents how denazification shaped the emerging political landscape in postwar Germany. I leverage sharp variation in denazification across Allied occupation zones, across districts, and within districts. I find that broader denazification reduced the demand for nationalist policies and changed social norms. Differences are driven by mass rather than elite cases and political consequences are observed absent major punishment. The results indicate that the breadth of transitional justice can be more important than its severity in coordinating norms on a new political equilibrium.

Work in Progress

Coordination and Collusion: Evidence from German Industrialization, with M. Weigand

Red Zones: Forced Displacement and Support for Far-Right Parties, with E. Dinas, F. Foos, and V. Fouka

Trade Shock and Political Development, with J. Dittmar 

Mass Media of Remembering: The Role of TV in Coming to Terms with the Nazi Past