I am a PhD candidate in the Government department at Harvard. My research lies at the intersection of Comparative Politics and Political Economy, focusing on the political repercussions of regional and individual economic disparities in advanced democracies in Europe. In my dissertation, I explore how local governments respond to adverse economic shocks. In my job market paper, I study how the Great Recession affected local tax policy in Germany. In additional published and ongoing research, I examine three related research areas: (i) the relationship between economic inequality and political behavior, (ii) economic disparities between immigrants and natives (iii) how growing regional disparities in local news presence affect polarization and political knowledge.
I explore these topics using novel data sets, ranging from self-collected survey data to archival data or large-scale administrative data sets. My empirical work pays close attention to causal inference and employs identification strategies such as regression discontinuity designs, field experiments, and matching designs. My publications and working papers are listed below and on my Google Scholar page.
Why are some societies more unequal than others? The French revolutionaries believed unequal inheritances
among siblings to be responsible for the strict hierarchies of the ancien r´egime. To achieve equality, the revolutionaries
therefore enforced equal inheritance rights. Their goal was to empower women and to disenfranchise the noble class. But do
equal inheritances succeed in leveling the societal playing field? We study Germany—a country with pronounced local-level
variation in inheritance customs—and find that municipalities that historically equally apportioned wealth, to this day,
elect more women into political councils and have fewer aristocrats in the social elite. Using historic data, we point to two
mechanisms: wealth equality and pro-egalitarian preferences. In a final step, we also show that, counterintuitively, equitable
inheritance customs positively predict income inequality.We interpret this finding to mean that equitable inheritances level
the playing field by rewarding talent, not status.
Does public opinion affect political speech? Of particular interest is whether public opinion affects (i) what topics politicians address and (ii) what positions they endorse. We present evidence from Germany where the government was recently forced to declassify its public opinion research, allowing us to link the content of the research to subsequent speeches. Our causal identification strategy exploits the exogenous timing of the research's dissemination to cabinet members within a window of a few days. We find that exposure to public opinion research leads politicians to markedly change their speech. First, we show that linguistic similarity between political speech and public opinion research increases significantly after reports are passed on to the cabinet, suggesting that politicians change the topics they address. Second, we demonstrate that exposure to public opinion research alters politicians' substantive positions in the direction of majority opinion.
How does a criminal record shape interactions with the State and society? We present evidence
from a nationwide field experiment, showing that prospective applicants with criminal records
are about five percentage points less likely to receive information from college admission offices.
However, we demonstrate that bias does not extend to race. There is no difference in
response rates to Black and White applicants. We further show that bias is all but absent in
public bureaucracies, as discrimination against formerly incarcerated applicants is driven by
private schools. Examining why bias is stronger for private colleges, we demonstrate that the
private-public difference persists even after accounting for college selectivity, socio-economic
composition and school finances. Moving beyond the measurement of bias, we evaluate an intervention
aimed at reducing discrimination: whether an email from an advocate mitigates bias
associated with a criminal record. However, we find no evidence that advocate endorsements
decrease bureaucratic bias.
How do freedom of movement restrictions affect refugee integration? While a growing body of research studies the initial spatial allocation of refugees, there is little causal evidence on subsequent policies that restrict residential mobility. We study a contentious law in Germany, which barred refugees from moving to a location different from the one they were randomly assigned to. To identify the causal effect of the movement restriction on integration, we utilize a sharp date cutoff that governs whether refugees are affected by the policy. We demonstrate that restricting freedom of movement had pronounced negative effects on refugees' sense of belonging in Germany while increasing identification with their home countries. In addition, the policy decreased engagement in a variety of social activities. Our findings suggest that discriminatory policies send a negative signal about the inclusiveness of the host society and thereby reduce the psychological integration of refugees.
Why do voters for the radical right tend to cluster in specific geographic locations? Many scholars have emphasized the economic roots of radical right support. Other scholarship highlights the role of the urban-rural divide, contending that the radical right finds support in low population density locations due to distinctive social values and strong place-based social identities found in rural areas. To date, however, we do not have a full grasp of the sources of these latter factors nor an understanding of the historical roots that explain their emergence. We argue that what is frequently classified as the "rural" bases of radical right support in previous research is in part a proxy for something entirely different: communities that were in the historical "periphery" in the center-periphery conflicts that shaped modern nation-state formation. Inspired by a classic state-building literature that emphasizes the prevalence of a "wealth of tongues" (Weber 1976) - or nonstandard linguistic dialects in a region - as a definition of the periphery, we use data from more than 725,000 geo-coded responses in a linguistic survey in Germany to show that voters from historically peripheral geographic communities are more likely to vote for the radical right today
Does government spending on public goods affect the vote choice of citizens? On the one hand, voters have been characterized as fiscal conservatives who may turn toward conservative parties when government spending goes up. On the other hand, increased spending signals that the economy is doing well, which makes progressive parties a more viable option. To adjudicate between both hypotheses, this paper draws on a natural experiment, which created exogenous variation in government spending. A discontinuity in the 2011 German census meant that some municipalities saw a significant, unforeseen increase in budgets. Using a well-powered regression discontinuity coupled with a difference-in-differences design, we show that the increase in budgets and subsequent spending on public goods benefited left-leaning parties. To parse out the causal channel, we rely on panel evidence and demonstrate that residents in treated municipalities viewed their economic situation more favorably, which led them to switch to progressive parties.
We examine how local news monopolies affect misperceptions about the size of the immigrant population in Germany. We propose a theoretical framework in which heterogeneous information from different local news outlets diffuses through social interactions. We posit that indirect exposure to information from multiple sources leads to more accurate beliefs in competitive markets. To causally identify the effect of local news monopolies on misperceptions, we exploit overlapping newspaper coverage areas as a source of exogenous variation in the number of available outlets. We estimate that local news monopolies increase misperceptions by 38%. We empirically demonstrate that the effect of media monopolies hinges on social interactions. For individuals with fewer close social contacts, misperceptions remain unaffected by local news monopolies. Our results suggest that consolidation in the market for news decreases constituents’ knowledge about critical policy issues.
Does the economic integration of refugees affect public attitudes toward migration? We assess this pertinent question by making use of a recent policy change in Germany, where the government significantly eased labor market access for refugees in 85% employment districts. Using administrative employment data spanning ten years, we show that the policy increased refugee employment by 50%. The policy also had a positive effect on natives' attitudes toward migration. Voters exposed to more refugees in the labor market were two percentage points more likely to vote for pro-migration parties across both state and federal elections. Using panel evidence, we corroborate that the policy led to more favorable attitudes toward migration among natives. Turning to mechanisms, we find that increasing refugee labor market access had no effect on natives' economic situation, but arguably facilitated positive native-refugee interactions in the workplace.
Shifting media diets are increasingly viewed as a key driver of political polarization. In particular, prior research has focused on greater choice between partisan outlets and the rise of online news. This paper sheds light on a heretofore understudied yet equally salient development: the decline of local news. We argue that local news exits can induce polarization by increasing exposure to news about national politics, where partisan and ideological differences are more salient than at the local level. To test our argument, we draw on a novel panel data set of the coverage areas of all German newspapers between 1980 and 2009. Using a difference-in-differences design, we demonstrate that local news exits increase electoral polarization. Consistent with our theoretical argument, we also find that local news exits lead to increased consumption of national news, higher degrees of partisan identification, and increased political engagement at the individual level.
Do political and social features of states help explain the evolving distribution of reported Covid-19 deaths? We identify national-level political and social characteristics that past research suggests may help explain variation in a society's ability to respond to adverse shocks. We highlight four sets of arguments---focusing on (1) state capacity, (2) political institutions, (3) political priorities, and (4) social structures---and report on their evolving association with cumulative Covid-19 deaths. After accounting for a simple set of Lasso-chosen controls, we find that measures of government effectiveness, interpersonal and institutional trust, bureaucratic corruption and ethnic fragmentation are currently associated in theory-consistent directions. We do not, however, find associations between deaths and many other political and social variables that have received attention in public discussions, such as populist governments or women-led governments. Currently, the results suggest that state capacity is more important for explaining Covid-19 mortality than government accountability to citizens, with potential implications for how the disease progresses in high-income versus low-income countries. These patterns may change over time with the evolution of the pandemic, however.
Recent experimental studies in the social sciences have demonstrated that short, perspectivetaking conversations are effective at reducing support for discriminatory public policies, but it remains unclear if these effects occur even if subjective feelings about the minority group are unchanged. Unfortunately, the identification and estimation of the controlled direct effect—the natural causal quantity of interest for this question—has required strong selection-on-observables assumptions for any mediator. Given that this assumption is too strong for many social science
settings, in this paper we show how to identify and estimate controlled direct effects under a difference-in-differences design where we have measurements of the outcome and the mediator before and after treatment is assigned. This design allows us to weaken the identification assumptions to allow for linear and time-constant unmeasured confounding between the mediator and the outcome. Furthermore, we develop a semiparametric efficient and multiply robust estimator for these quantities. We find that there is a robust controlled direct effect of perspective-taking conversations when subjective feelings are neutral but not positive or negative. An open-source software package implements the approach with a variety of flexible, machine-learning algorithms for nuisance functions estimation.
Ongoing work
Party Nominations and Female Electoral Performance: Evidence from Germany
(with Pia Raffler and Thomas Fujiwara)
[Abstract]
What accounts for differences in electoral success between male and female candidates? We exploit features of the German mixed electoral system and a decomposition strategy to study the contribution of parties systematically nominating female candidates to run in districts where the party is less popular, and distinguish it from voter behavior (e.g., discrimination). Using a panel of all electoral districts in eleven federal elections (1983--2021), we document that the relative under-performance of female candidates nominated by the two largest parties can be explained by this systematic nomination behavior that adversely affects female candidates. Moreover, parties' nominations strategies can explain most of the variation in gender gaps in electoral performance across parties and election years. We do not find evidence that bias among voters systematically contributes to candidate gender differences in vote shares. Our findings thus suggest that efforts to address female under-representation that focus on party gatekeepers may be more effective than those addressing voter behavior
Citizen Demands and Strategic Responsiveness in Autocratic Regimes - Evidence from the German Democratic Republic
(with Hans Lueders and Sascha Riaz)
[Abstract]
Do autocrats strategically respond to citizen demands to ensure regime survival? To answer this question, we assemble a novel panel of housing-related petitions to the government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in combination with data on housing construction between 1945 and 1989. Exploiting the timing of the largest GDR housing program, we employ a difference-in-differences design to show that the housing program was targeted at regions with higher rates of petitioning. We then demonstrate that strategic concerns about regime survival drove responsiveness. We show that the regime was more responsive to petitions from counties with export industries and counties with high collective action potential. Finally, we show that responsiveness lastingly impacts regime support. In the first democratic elections after the demise of the GDR, the authoritarian successor party received more votes in regions targeted by the housing program.
Does Rent Control Turn Tenants Into NIMBYs?
(with Anselm Hager and Robert Vief)
[Abstract]
Affordable housing is a key challenge of the 21st century. One particularly important driver of growing housing prices is residents' opposition to construction, a phenomenon known as NIMBYism ("Not In My Backyard"). Faced with growing prices and resident NIMBYism, city governments have increasingly implemented rent control policies. Does rent control, by making tenants more likely to stay in their apartments spark NIMBYism and thus exacerbate the housing crisis? We study the case of Berlin, which recently passed a sweeping rent control law. Leveraging two discontinuities in the policy, we show that rent control made tenants less NIMBY. Specifically, tenants in rent controlled apartments became more likely to approve of local-level construction and immigration, compared to tenants in non-rent-controlled apartments. We argue that the decline in NIMBYism is likely due to an economic channel. Tenants in urban centers associate construction and immigration with displacement pressures and gentrification. Rent control alleviates these concerns by providing financial and residential security.
