JOB MARKET PAPER
Abstract
The promise that effort yields social ascent lends legitimacy to unequal outcomes. This paper asks whether populism grows when that promise loses credibility---and whether populist attitudes respond to beliefs about social mobility levels (how much of it exists) or the process (whether ascent is earned). I combine original survey and experimental data from 6,600 U.S. residents with local measures of intergenerational mobility and electoral returns. Areas with lower mobility exhibit stronger populist attitudes and higher support for Donald Trump. Residents of these areas perceive less mobility nationwide and more often attribute ascent to luck rather than effort. Two pre-registered experiments separate the belief channels. Narratives portraying ascent as luck-driven shift beliefs about the mobility process by thirty percent of a standard deviation; populist attitudes do not move on average, but they become substantially more positively associated with the induced belief update under treatment, particularly among respondents without own upward-mobility experience. Correcting beliefs about the level of mobility moves process beliefs: respondents who learn that mobility is higher than they believed, in turn, attribute ascent more to effort than to luck. Yet populist attitudes remain unchanged, a null tight enough to rule out the level channel. The evidence suggests that process beliefs are the politically relevant margin, and mobility statistics too weak a lever on them to counter populism. A simple two-period model rationalizes the asymmetry. Because process beliefs are anchored in observed local mobility, restoring meritocratic belief requires expanding real opportunity.
WORKING PAPERS
with Daniel Graeber and Neil Murray
Abstract
Terrorism affects individuals far beyond its immediate victims, with large economic consequences. We estimate the effect of terrorism on risk preferences by merging geocoded panel data with the Global Terrorism Database in a staggered difference-in-differences design comparing those within and beyond 25 kilometers of attacks in Germany. Exposure reduces willingness to take risks by 2 percent of a standard deviation---localized, peaking after one year, dissipating within five---implying welfare losses near 106 million Euro annually. We classify 60,000 news articles with a fine-tuned language model and separate two media channels: the salience and the emotional tone of coverage. Holding attack severity fixed, responses are concentrated among attacks with more extensive and more negative coverage. The survey data corroborate media transmission---respondents who do not read newspapers do not respond---and point to declining happiness as the emotional mechanism. After severe attacks, self-employment falls by 2 percentage points.
with Matilda Gettins
Revisions requested, Environmental & Resource Economics
Abstract
Populist parties increasingly deploy narratives of social injustice to portray climate policy as elitist and unfair. This paper investigates how such narratives affect public attitudes toward populism and democratic institutions. We conduct a survey experiment with approximately 1,600 respondents in Germany, exposing participants to three common narratives about the distributional costs of climate policy. Our findings show that the narrative emphasizing disproportionate burdens on low-income households significantly increases climate-populist attitudes and reduces satisfaction with democracy. These effects are particularly pronounced among low-income, East German, and conservative voters. By contrast, the narrative that companies can circumvent the cost of climate action fosters climate populism among left-leaning individuals. The results suggest that the framing of climate policy distribution strongly shapes its political acceptance and vulnerability to populist mobilization.
PUBLICATIONS
with Lukas Menkhoff and Carsten Schröder
International Review of Financial Analysis, 2025, Vol. 107, 104604
Abstract
Stock market participation among working household heads jumped upwards in the year 2020, in Germany by about 25%. A major cause is the required use of work from home (WfH). We show this by repeating a benchmark study with demanding data requests and adding WfH to the explanatory variables. Moreover, we implement an instrumental variables estimation based on industry-specific levels of WfH-capacity. The transmission channels seem to work via increased available time and time flexibility. Moreover, we show that WfH makes the stock market accessible to a broader population, including lower income groups, which may contribute to lower income inequality.
with Daniel Graeber and Panu Poutvaara
European Journal of Political Economy, 2024, Vol. 85, 102593
Abstract
In times of crises, democracies face the challenge of balancing effective interventions with civil liberties. This study examines Germany's response during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on the interplay between civil liberties and public health goals. Using state-level variation in mobility restrictions, we employ a difference-in-differences design to show that stay-at-home orders notably increased satisfaction with democracy and shifted political support towards centrist parties. Individuals who were exposed to the authoritarian regime of the German Democratic Republic show the largest reactions, underscoring the endogeneity of preferences for state intervention.