Public Governance workshop

2025-03-24 at 17:30h

Desmond Ang (Harvard Kennedy School of Government)

TBA

2025-03-17 at 17:30h

Matteo Grigoletto (University of Bern)

Censorship in Democracy (with Marcel Caesman, Janis Goldzycher and Lorenz Gschwent)

Abstract: The spread of propaganda, misinformation, and biased narratives from autocratic regimes, especially on social media, is a growing concern in many democracies. Can censorship be an effective tool to curb the spread of such slanted narratives? In this paper, we study the European Union’s ban on Russian state-led news outlets after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. We analyze 775,616 tweets from 133,276 users on Twitter/X, employing a difference-in-differences strategy. We show that the ban reduced pro-Russian slant among users who had previously directly interacted with banned outlets. The impact is most pronounced among users with the highest pre-ban slant levels. However, this effect was short-lived, with slant returning to its pre-ban levels within two weeks post-enforcement. Additionally, we find a detectable albeit less pronounced indirect effect on users who had not directly interacted with the outlets before the ban. We provide evidence that other suppliers of propaganda may have actively sought to mitigate the ban’s influence by intensifying their activity, effectively counteracting the persistence and reach of the ban.

2025-03-03 at 17:30h

Emily Silcock (Harvard University)

The effect of policy narratives on economic outcomes: The case of welfare stigma

Abstract: Many public policies are accompanied by narratives which exist independently of the formal policy text. This paper focuses on narratives around welfare benefits. Popular narratives around welfare benefits have taken many forms, from Reagan's `Welfare Queen' in the US, `welfare Wednesday' in Canada, to `Florida Rolf' in Germany. First, we provide descriptive evidence on the prevalence of narratives about welfare across the UK, USA, Germany and France. Using data from national newspapers across these four countries and natural language processing techniques, we find that on average 1 in 100 articles mentions welfare, with the highest levels in the UK and the lowest in France. Second, focusing on the UK, we look at the causal effect of these narratives on beliefs, welfare benefit take-up and labour market decisions. Using an event study design, around the publication of negative stories, we find a decrease of 4 to 5% in applications to welfare benefits, and a 1 to 2% reduction in job search intensity.

2025-02-17 at 17:30h

Chloe Ahn (University of Pennsylvania)

[Study 1] International Source of Hostility Toward Refugees, & [Study 2] Cultural Backlash to Globalization: Evidence from K-Pop

Abstract: [Study 1] While refugee issues have been heavily politicized in popular host countries, politics is still in flux in countries with little refugee inflows. How do natives respond to refugee inflows in the absence of clear political cues? We examine this question using a case of the unexpected arrival of Yemeni refugees in South Korea in 2018, an ethnically homogeneous country with limited political discourse on refugees. Using supervised text analysis of over 150,000 posts on social media, we show that the arrival of refugees led to a significant rise in engagement and negative attitudes towards refugees without partisan polarization. In the absence of domestic partisan cues, individuals turned to international events, particularly the 2015 European refugee crisis. Hostility toward Yemeni refugees in Korea was expressed with frequent references to the European refugee crisis. These findings broaden our understanding of refugee reception beyond popular host countries and demonstrate how backlash against refugees can spread globally.   [Study 2] How does globalization influence cultural products, and how do consumers respond to cultural changes driven by global influences? This paper uses K-pop, a globally popular Korean music genre, as a case to examine these questions. While the industry has gained economic benefits as one of Korea's fastest-growing export sectors, its success has necessitated internationalizing content to appeal to foreign audiences, making it a prime example of cultural globalization. Analyzing nearly three million YouTube comments (2010–2023) with LLM-aided text analysis, we find rising anti-globalization and anti-foreign sentiments among Korean consumers as K-pop becomes more globalized. These findings illustrate how cultural globalization, despite its economic benefits, can provoke hostility when foreign influence is perceived as diluting national identity, underscoring the importance of cultural dimensions in globalization’s societal impacts.

2025-02-03 at 17:30h

Eleonora Alabrese (University of Bath)

Politicized Scientists: Credibility Cost of Political Expression on Twitter (joint with Francesco Capozza and Prashant Garg)

Abstract: As social media is increasingly popular, we examine the reputational costs of its increased centrality among academics. Analyzing posts of 98,000 scientists on Twitter (2016–2022) reveals substantial and varied political discourse. We assess the impact of such online political expression with online experiments on a representative sample of 3,700 U.S. respondents and 135 journalists who rate vignettes of synthetic academic profiles with varied political affiliations. Politically neutral scientists are viewed as the most credible. Strikingly, on both the ’left’ and ’right’ sides of politically neutral, there is a monotonic penalty for scientists displaying political affiliations: the stronger their posts, the less credible their profile and research are perceived, and the lower the public’s willingness to read their content, especially among oppositely aligned respondents. A survey of 128 scientists shows awareness of this penalty and a consensus on avoiding political expression outside their expertise.

2024-12-16 at 12:15h

Fatjon Kaja (University of Amsterdam)

Refraiming Corporate Purpose: A Historical Perspective

Abstract: This research examines the historical evolution of corporate purpose and the legal mechanisms affecting corporate charters. Drawing upon UK royal charters and utilizing textual analysis, the study reveals that corporate charters were issued to fulfill some public-oriented purpose. The analysis shows that such conception of corporate purpose was enforced. Employing the case study of the Massachusetts Bay Company, the research demonstrates that charter revocations historically stemmed from corporate activities exceeding specified purposes. Contrary to prevalent contemporary discourse emphasizing corporate purpose as a broad goal, this study highlights the importance of law in ensuring a commitment to a limited, well-defined corporate purpose. Ultimately, this research contributes to a nuanced understanding of corporate purpose, highlighting its historical roots and its implications for contemporary corporate governance and legal practices

2024-06-03 at 17:30h

Berkeren Büyükeren (EIEF and LUISS)

Endogenous Local Government Formation and Nation Building (joint with Serhii Abramenko)

Abstract: How does local government amalgamation affect public goods provision, economic activity, and nation building? We focus on an administrative reform in Ukraine between 2015-2020, during which smaller local councils (LCs) had the opportunity to voluntarily amalgamate in order to keep a substantially larger portion of their tax revenues and gain greater autonomy over the local administration. By investigating the determinants of the willingness to amalgamate, we show that some of the pre-reform characteristics, such as tax revenues, the share of native Russian speakers, and political preferences, were not substantial predictors of the amalgamation. We first show that the reform positively impacted district level personal income tax collection. Secondly, by employing previously unused data on standardized college entrance exam results, we estimate a staggered difference-in-differences model and show that the reform did not affect the Ukrainian test scores significantly. For math results, it led to a 0.07 standard deviation decrease after four years of exposure. Utilizing the same staggered design, we show that the reform led to 0.06 standard deviations increase in log nightlight intensity per capita after four years of exposure. Finally, using a nationally representative repeated cross-sectional survey, we document the greater self-identification as Ukrainian as opposed to Russian in rural areas.

2024-04-08 at 17:30h

Arianna Ornaghi (Hertie School)

The Returns to Viral Media: The Case of US Campaign Contributions (with Johannes Böken, Mirko Draca, and Nicola Mastrorocco)

Abstract: Social media has changed the structure of mass communication. In this paper we explore its role in influencing political donations. Using a daily dataset of campaign contributions and Twitter activity for US Members of Congress 2019-2020, we find that attention on Twitter (as measured by likes) is positively correlated with the amount of daily small donations received. However, this is not true for everybody: the impact on campaign donations is highly skewed, indicating very concentrated returns to attention that are in line with a ‘winner-takes-all’ market. Our results are confirmed in a geography-based causal design linking member’s donations across states.

2024-03-11 at 17:30h

Rosanne Logeart (Paris School of Economics)

Does Access Mean Success? Connection to Policy-Makers and Lobbying Success of Political Actors

Abstract: This article aims at understanding the policy-making process by examining the relationship between access to policy-makers and lobbying success. I collect unique large-scale textual data on the content of lobbying activities and their subsequent policy changes. I identify instances of lobbying success with two complementary approaches: one based on a plagiarism-detection algorithm and the other on GPT. I match this novel data with meetings held between policy-makers and interest representatives to measure access to policy-makers. It reveals notable disparities in access, with the business sector having more access to policy-makers than the civil society. Moreover, I find that access to policy-makers is associated with a higher likelihood of lobbying success, by 11 percent of one standard deviation. This increased success likelihood is larger for entities with more access, as measured by the number of meetings they have. Distinguishing access to policy-makers contemporaneously or before the discussions on a policy, I find that prior access to policy-makers is also associated with higher chances of success. It suggests that reputation and connection-building play a critical role. These results are driven by the business sector, composed of companies and business associations. It indicates that in addition to having more access to policy-makers and being better politically connected, companies and business associations derive greater benefits from these connections. In contrast, NGOs with access to policy-makers do not display an increased probability of success.

2024-02-19 at 17:30h

Jaime Marques Pereira (Lancaster University)

Trumping the News: A High-Frequency Analysis

Abstract: Do mainstream media outlets actively amplify politicians' social media statements, and does this amplification influence individuals' political opinions? I first study cable news coverage of Donald J. Trump's tweets using novel high-frequency coverage measures for CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. I show that Trump was able to set the agenda of cable news outlets through Twitter, with cable outlets covering his tweets minutes after these had been posted. I then leverage a large public opinion survey to investigate the impact of TV coverage of Trump's tweets on public opinion. I find that CNN's coverage of Donald J. Trump's tweets caused CNN viewers to decrease their approval of President Trump hours after coverage. Conversely, coverage on Fox News resulted in an increase in President Trump's approval ratings among Fox News viewers. These findings shed light on a new channel through which social media impacts individuals' political opinions, potentially fuelling political polarization.

2024-02-05 at 17:30h

Sulin Sardoschau (Humboldt University)

Public Signal and Private Action: Right-wing Protest and Hate Crimes against Refugees (joint with Annalí Casanueva Artís)

Abstract: How does the success of a movement influence the most extreme fractions within it? We examine this question in the context of the ascent of PEGIDA, Germany's most prominent right-wing movement since World War II. We combine a difference in differences strategy with variation in local weather conditions to show that municipalities experience a surge in hate crimes following protest days with a larger number of participants. The effects are most pronounced for municipalities with higher social media penetration and a more economically vulnerable refugee population. We also document that large protests have substantial spill-over effects to other municipalities that propagate through social media networks rather than geographic proximity. Our findings suggest that a public display of support for a movement — measured in terms of protest attendance and favorable public perception — can reduce the social cost of radical behavior and embolden extremist factions within the movement.

2024-01-22 at 17:30h

Alexey Makarin (MIT Sloan)

The Political Economic Determinants of Nuclear Power Investment: Evidence from Chernobyl (with Nancy Qian and Shaoda Wang)

Abstract: This paper investigates the political-economic determinants of nuclear energy investment using the Chernobyl accident as a natural experiment. We document several facts. First, Chernobyl reduced worldwide growth in the number of nuclear power plants. Second, the reduction is driven by increased construction delays in democracies and results in the prolonged use of older and less safe plants. Third, the nuclear growth slowdown in democracies is more pronounced in the presence of large fossil fuel reserves. Finally, nuclear plant capacity reduces coal-fired power plants and air pollution. The results for the UK parliament and the US Congress provide suggestive evidence that lobbying by energy groups was an important driver of the reduction in nuclear energy investment in democracies and, in the long run, likely undermined efforts to increase nuclear energy safety and moderate climate change.

2023-11-27 at 17:30h

Joao Pereira dos Santos (ISEG & Queen Mary University of London)

The Electoral Impact of a Large Return Migration Shock in a Nascent Democracy (with Miguel Fonseca and Susana Peralta)

Abstract: We study the causal impact of a large and unexpected return migration episode on political outcomes during a democratic transition that was characterized by severe political and economic instability. We analyse how the forced displacement of close to half a million settlers from Portuguese speaking African countries, motivated by the eruption of civil wars in these territories, influenced election outcomes after the 1974 Carnation Revolution in Portugal. We apply a difference-in-differences with a continuous treatment assignment based on the share of repatriates per municipality. To deal with potential endogeneity issues, we instrument this with two shift-share variables that rely on very detailed census data covering the universe of repatriates and including information on their regions of birth. We find that repatriates significantly increased voting for right-wing parties in the ten years after the Revolution.

2023-10-30 at 17:30h

Alexander Yarkin (LISER & UC Davis)

Lobbying for Industrialization

Abstract: This paper develops a model of lobbying over industrialization policies and tests its predictions against the data on public petitions to the British Parliament and the US Congress in the 18th-19th centuries. Our theory integrates endogenous lobbying over industrial policies into the standard two-sector model of structural change, and predicts that the intensity of such lobbying first increases at the early stages of structural change, and then declines when the traditional sector contracts. This prediction finds support in the data on industrialization-related petitions in both Britain and the US. Moreover, the model predicts that places with historically more concentrated capital ownership are more successful in lobbying for industrialization. The opposite holds for the concentration of land ownership. We find support for these predictions in (i) data on petitions, (ii) counterfactual simulations, and (iii) historical examples from the 19th century Prussia and from the Middle East.

2023-06-19 at 17:30h

Milena Djourelova (University of Chicago)

Experience, Narratives and Climate Change Beliefs

Abstract: We study the media discourse and public opinion on climate change in the aftermath of extreme weather events. In both cable news and local media, and for both national-interest and local events, we find that left-leaning media consistently increase their coverage of climate change in the aftermath of natural disasters, while conservative media do not, despite equal disaster-related coverage. We then link the experience of disasters to concerns about climate change and the environment expressed in large-scale electoral surveys. We find a polarizing effect: disaster experience increases environmental concerns among liberal respondents, but has the opposite effect on conservative respondents. Both effects are driven by areas where the ideology of the respondent is in the minority.

2023-05-22 at 17:30h

Julian Dyer (University of Exeter Business School)

Words as Data: Evidence on Cultural Convergence and Change

Abstract: In this presentation we discuss our work based on a global, sub-national data set on cross-societal transmission. We use data on how words sound, how they are spelled, and what they mean, to estimate the etymological roots of each word and identify loanwords, using machine learning techniques. Societies with more loanword exchange share more societal traits in common, reinforcing the idea that cross-societal linguistic transmission proxies more generally for the diffusion of traits between groups. We use this to show that improved gains from trade causes cultural convergence, but that economic leverage determines the direction of convergence within a pair of language groups. Finally, we introduce a purely language data-driven approach to exploit the relevant information encoded in language to estimate the geographic origins of a historical phenomenon. We apply the methodology by tracing the history of religious words back to their originating languages to estimate the geographic origin of religious spread for each of Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity within 500km of historical estimates.

2023-04-03 at 17:30h

Clément Gorin (University of Toronto)

The Emergence, Growth, and Stagnation of Cities: France 1760-2020

Abstract: This paper analyses the evolution of French urban areas from a historical perspective. Using building footprints extracted from collections of digitised historical maps covering mainland France in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, we define consistently urban areas and analyse their trajectories along the urban hierarchy. Our findings highlight increasing urbanisation with fewer and larger urban areas, consistent with agglomerations economies. Disaggregate analysis reveals significant heterogeneity, with the emergence, persistence, disappearance of urban areas.

2023-03-06 at 17:30h

Michael Poyker (University of Nottingham)

Economic Consequences of the U.S. Convict Labor System

Abstract: I study the economic spillovers of convict labor on local labor markets and firms. Using newly collected panel data on U.S. prisons from 1886 to 1940, I calculate each county’s exposure to prisons. I exploit quasi-random variation in a county’s exposure to the capacities of pre-convict-labor prisons as an instrument. I find that competition from cheap prison-made goods led to higher unemployment and reduced wages (particularly for women) in counties that housed competing manufacturing industries. Affected industries innovated away from the competition and thus had higher patenting rates. I also document that technological changes in affected industries were capital-biased.

2023-02-06 at 17:30h

Miao Ben Zhang (University of Southern California)

The Cost of Regulatory Compliance in the United States (with Francesco Trebbi)

Abstract: We quantify firms' regulatory compliance costs from 2002 to 2014 in terms of their labor spending to adhere to government rules. Detailed establishment-level occupation data, in combination with occupation-specific task information, allow us to recover the share of an establishment's wage bill owing to employees engaged in regulatory compliance. Regulatory costs account on average for 1.34 to 3.33 percent of the total wage bill of a firm, totaling between $79 and $239 billion in 2014. We investigate the returns to scale in regulatory compliance and find an inverted-U shape, with the percentage regulatory spending peaking for a firm size of around 500 employees. Finally, we develop an instrumental variable methodology for decoupling the role of regulatory requirements from that of enforcement in driving firms' compliance costs.

2023-01-09 at 17:30h

Annalí Casanueva Artís (PSE)

Can chants in the street change politics’ tune? Evidence from the 15M movement in Spain

Abstract: What are the long term effects of protests? This paper studies how the level of attendance at simultaneous marches organized by the 15M (the Spanish Occupy movement) impacted electoral behavior and political attitudes in the following decade. Using regional variation in weather shocks as an instrumental variable for the level of attendance at simultaneous marches, I find that cities with higher attendance are more concerned about corruption and vote more for left wing and anti-corruption parties and less for far-right parties. Using novel data from Twitter, I document, for the first time, a higher uptake of social media platforms after an offline protest and a persistent difference in online activity in cities with higher attendance. Using survey data, I also show a higher and longer-lasting electoral effect for people that have a social media account. Overall, this paper shows that street protests can have long-lasting effects on political concerns and electoral choices, explained, in part, by the creation of a persistent online social network.

2022-10-17 at 17:30h

Christina J Schneider (UC San Diego)

Globalization and Promissory Representation

Abstract: Promissory representation holds that political parties make promises to voters during election campaigns and generally keep those promises after elections if they have the opportunity to do so. Specific campaign promises let voters know where parties stand on issues, and voters' assessments of governing parties' past records of pledge fulfill- ment is one way in which parties are held to account. Despite the centrality of promise keeping to representation, we know little about how it is affected by economic global- ization, which is one of the defining characteristics of the modern world. We argue that globalization reduces governing parties' ability to keep their campaign promises. Inter- national economic integration increases uncertainty about the feasibility of promises, imposes legal constraints in the form of international commitments that may impede promise keeping in unexpected ways, and empowers market actors that lobby govern- ments when promises threaten their interests. We test the empirical implications of our theory with a mixed-methods approach that combines a large-n quantitative com- parative analysis of pledge fulfillment with a typical case study to trace the underlying causal mechanisms of the theory. The findings indicate that international economic integration exerts a large negative effect on the likelihood of pledge fulfillment in a broad range of contexts and that the hypothesized mechanisms are clearly observable in the detailed case study. These findings have important implications for democratic representation in a globalized world.