Hanno Hilbig

I am a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University. I graduaded with a PhD from the Department of Government at Harvard University in 2022. My research lies at the intersection of Comparative Politics and Political Economy. My research explores the political implications of central challenges facing established democracies, such as shifting media landscapes, immigration, inequality, fiscal adversity, and housing. I employ causal inference techniques for observational data, including regression discontinuity designs, difference-in-differences designs, and matching designs.

Previously, I was affiliated with the Institutions and Political Inequality Group at WZB Berlin. At Harvard, I was research fellow in the Stone Program in Wealth Distribution, Inequality and Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

1. Do Inheritance Customs Affect Political and Social Inequality? 2019. (with Anselm Hager). American Journal of Political Science, 63 (4): 758-773. [Abstract]
   
   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 regime. 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.
    
2. Does Public Opinion Affect Political Speech? 2020. (with Anselm Hager). American Journal of Political Science, 64 (4): 921-937. [Abstract]
   
   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.
    
3. Locked Out of College: When Admissions Bureaucrats Do and Do Not Discriminate. 2022. (with Jacob Brown). British Journal of Political Science, 52(3): 1436-1446. [Abstract] [Preprint]
   
   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.
    
4. Freedom of Movement Restrictions Inhibit the Psychological Integration of Refugees (with Sascha Riaz). Journal of Politics., 84(4): 2288-2293. [Abstract] [Preprint]
   
   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.
    
5. Natural Disasters and Green Party Support (With Sascha Riaz). Forthcoming, Journal of Politics. [Abstract]
   
   A growing literature shows that extreme weather events induce pro-environment attitudes. We examine the political effects of a severe flood shortly before the 2021 German federal election. Drawing on about 600,000 survey responses and electoral data, we assess how flooding affected (i) the perceived salience of climate change, (ii) self-reported Green Party support, and (iii) Green Party voting in federal elections. We find that even severe local flooding had little to no effect on these outcomes. Additional evidence supports two mechanisms underlying this finding: nationwide rather than local effects of severe disasters, and voter demands for disaster relief rather than climate change prevention. We test the former mechanism using a regression discontinuity design and find that the flood increased nationwide Green Party support, although this effect persists for only two weeks. Our results shed new light on the precise duration and geographic scope of the political effects of natural disasters.
    
6. Local News Monopolies Increase Misperceptions about Immigration (with Sascha Riaz). Forthcoming, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. [Abstract]
   
   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 about the size of the local immigrant population by about four percentage points. We 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.
    
7. Refugee Labor Market Access Increases Support for Migration (With Anselm Hager and Sascha Riaz). Accepted, Comparative Political Studies. [Abstract]
   
   Does the economic integration of refugees affect public attitudes toward migration? We assess this pertinent question by examining a policy change in Germany, where the government significantly eased labor market access for refugees in the majority of the country. Using administrative employment data, we show that the policy led to a substantial increase in refugee employment, while natives' wages and employment rates remained unaffected. The policy also had a \textit{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. Additional survey analyses suggest that our results are driven by positive native-refugee interactions in the workplace.
    
8. Wealth of Tongues: Why Peripheral Regions Vote for the Radical Right in Germany (with Daniel Bischof and Daniel Ziblatt). Conditionally Accepted, American Political Science Review. [Abstract]
   
   Why is support for the radical right higher in some geographic locations than others? This paper argues that what is frequently classified as the “rural” bases of radical right support in previous research is in part the result of something different: communities that were in the historical “periphery” in the center-periphery conflicts of 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.
    
9. Government Spending and Voting Behavior (With Anselm Hager). Conditionally accepted, World Politics. [Abstract]
   
   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.
    

10. Local Newspaper Decline and Political Polarization in Multi-Party Systems (With Fabio Ellger, Sascha Riaz and Philipp Tillman). Revise & Resubmit, British Journal of Political Science. [Abstract]
    
    How does the decline of local news affect political polarization? We provide novel panel evidence on this question in a multi-party setting. In particular, we shed light on the link between newspaper exits, media consumption, and ultimately electoral behavior. To study the aggregate relationship between local news exits and polarization, we rely on a unique panel of all German local newspapers between 1980 and 2009. In addition, we precisely trace individual-level mechanisms by drawing on an annual media consumption survey of more than 670,000 respondents over three decades. Using a difference-in-differences design, we demonstrate that local newspaper exits increase electoral polarization, which aligns with evidence from the American context. Going beyond prior work, we then document that local news exits increase polarization because affected constituents substitute local news with national tabloid news. Finally, we show that local news exits increase politicization and partisanship at the individual level.
     
11. Does Rent Control Turn Tenants Into NIMBYs? (with Anselm Hager and Robert Vief). Reject & Resubmit, Journal of Politics. [Abstract]
    
    Affordable housing is a key challenge of the 21st century. A pivotal driver of growing housing prices is residents' opposition to construction, a phenomenon known as NIMBYism ("Not In My Backyard"). To make housing more affordable, city governments are increasingly implementing 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.
     
12. The Role of Media in Hard Times: How Local Newspapers Affect Policy Responses to Economic Crises. [Abstract]
    
    How does local media shape policy responses to economic crises? Amidst a shift away from traditional outlets, prior work documents how changes in the media landscape affect constituents' attitudes and behavior, but we know less about the downstream consequences for tangible policy outcomes. In this paper, I present new and comprehensive evidence on the relationship between local government responses to economic crises and the availability of local news. Theoretically, local news may (i) increase accountability, increasing congruence between voter preferences and policy outcomes, but also (ii) change constituents' preferences by exposing them to information on the negative repercussions of a crisis. To study these mechanisms, I compile a fourteen-year panel of key fiscal policy outcomes for 2,193 German municipalities, focusing on the critical areas of business and property taxation. Using a difference-in-differences design, I first show that local governments in areas more strongly affected by the crisis respond by enacting tax cuts for local businesses. I then utilize overlapping media coverage areas to obtain exogenous variation in newspaper availability, demonstrating that business tax cuts are largest in areas with a greater local media presence. Finally, I present survey evidence that is consistent with a mechanism where newspaper reporting on the crisis induces economic anxiety, increasing popular demands for responses that benefit the struggling local economy. These results have implications for research on the interplay between media and policy outcomes, as well as for work on democratic accountability more broadly.
     
13. Political and Social Correlates of Covid-19 Mortality (with Constantin Manuel Bosancianu, Macartan Humphreys, Sampada KC, Nils Lieber and Alex Scacco) [Abstract]
    
    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.
     
14. Difference-in-differences Designs for Controlled Direct Effects (with Matthew Blackwell, Adam Glynn and Connor Phillips) [Abstract]
    
    Political scientists are increasingly interested in controlled direct effects, which are important quantities of interest for understanding why, how, and when causal effects will occur. Unfortunately, their identification has usually required strong and often unreasonable selection-on-observeables assumptions for the mediator. 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 mediator before and after treatment assignment. This design allows us to weaken the identification assumptions to allow for linear, time-constant unmeasured confounding between the mediator and the outcome. Furthermore, we develop a semiparametrically efficient and multiply robust estimator for these quantities and apply our approach to a recent experiment evaluating the effectiveness of short conversations at reducing intergroup prejudice. An open-source software package implements the methodology with a variety of flexible, machine-learning algorithms to avoid bias from misspecification.
     
15. 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
     
16. Do Autocrats Respond to Citizen Demands? Petitions and Housing Construction in the GDR (with Hans Lueders and Sascha Riaz) [Abstract]
    
    Citizens in authoritarian regimes frequently communicate grievances to the government. While there is some evidence that governments respond to such petitions, little is known about the nature of this responsiveness: can petitions yield tangible improvements to citizens' livelihoods? To answer this question, we assemble a novel panel of housing-related petitions to the government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and all housing constructed between 1945-1989. Exploiting the timing of the largest housing program in 1971, we employ a difference-in-differences design to show that construction was targeted at regions with higher rates of petitioning. We then use a variance decomposition method to benchmark the importance of petitions against objective indicators of housing need. Our results suggest that petitions allow citizens to meaningfully influence the allocation of public resources. The paper contributes to nascent scholarship on responsiveness in non-democratic regimes and shows that responsiveness leads to tangible improvements in citizens' livelihoods.