Research

Working Papers


Political Representation Gaps and Populism

Do parliaments in Europe do what their voters and citizens want? This paper shows that frequently they dont and how these “representation gaps” relate to populism.

Media coverage: IEP@BU1, IEP@BU2, IEP@BU3, The American Saga, Eco

Inherited Inequality and the Dilemma of Meritocracy

with Timo Freyer

R&R at Experimental Economics (2nd round)

Many find unequal opportunities unfair. But if people are allowed to support their children or friends opportunities will always be unequal. How do people handle this “Dilemma of Meritocracy”?

Would Europeans Accept Immigrants if they Knew them?

This paper presents a method to estimate attitudes of natives toward immigrants who hold biased beliefs toward immigrants if they were informed about the actual characteristics of immigrants.

Is History Repeating Itself? Populism in the Weimar Republic and Modern Germany

with Paul Behler

We compare the history of the Weimar Republic and modern Germany through the lens of populism. To this end, we analyze for both states how the populist rhetoric contained in parliamentary speeches evolved over time.

Information Interventions can Increase Opposition to Immigration

Recent research has shown that natives overestimate the number of immigrants in their country and that informing them makes them more accepting toward immigrants. I show that these results can be reversed by focusing on asylum seekers, the sub-group of immigrants that natives are most opposed to.

Work in Progress


Do Representation Gaps Cause Populism?

with Salvatore Nunnari

We conduct an information provision experiment to estimate the causal effect of perceived representation gaps on the support for political parties. To this end, we manipulate the perceptions of a representative sample of German citizens on whether the main center right party fills the representtaion gap regarding immigration.