This paper analyzes the effects on voting behavior of information disseminated over the Internet. We address endogeneity in Internet availability by exploiting regional and technological ...peculiarities of the preexisting voice telephony network that hindered the roll-out of fixed-line infrastructure for high-speed Internet. We find negative effects of Internet availability on voter turnout, which we relate to a crowding-out of TV consumption and increased entertainment consumption. We find no evidence that the Internet systematically benefits specific parties, suggesting ideological self-segregation in online information consumption. Robustness tests, including placebo estimations from the pre-Internet period, support a causal interpretation of our results.
The Effect of Trade on Workers and Voters Dippel, Christian; Gold, Robert; Heblich, Stephan ...
The Economic journal (London),
01/2022, Letnik:
132, Številka:
641
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Abstract
We investigate economic causes of the rising support of populist parties in industrialised countries. Looking at Germany, we find that exposure to imports from low-wage countries increases ...the support for nationalist parties between 1987–2009, while increasing exports have the opposite effect. The net effect translates into increasing support of the right-populist Alternative for Germany party after its emergence in 2013. Individual data from the German Socio-Economic Panel reveal that low-skilled manufacturing workers’ political preferences are most responsive to trade exposure. Using a novel approach to causal mediation analysis, we identify trade-induced labour market adjustments as an economic mechanism causing the voting response to international trade.
Abstract
Using newly constructed spatially disaggregated data for London from 1801 to 1921, we show that the invention of the steam railway led to the first large-scale separation of workplace and ...residence. We show that a class of quantitative urban models is remarkably successful in explaining this reorganization of economic activity. We structurally estimate one of the models in this class and find substantial agglomeration forces in both production and residence. In counterfactuals, we find that removing the whole railway network reduces the population and the value of land and buildings in London by up to 51.5% and 53.3% respectively, and decreases net commuting into the historical center of London by more than 300,000 workers.
Can local industrial policies increase local firm competitiveness? Cluster-oriented policies targeted at selected industries have just such a goal and are very popular among politicians, despite the ...controversy surrounding these policies in academia. Thus, it would appear useful to discover if cluster-oriented policies are effective. This paper evaluates the cluster-oriented policy introduced in Bavaria, Germany, in 1999. The policy's goal was to foster innovation and regional competitiveness by stimulating cooperation. Using difference-in-difference-in-differences estimates, we find for different innovation measures that the cluster-oriented policy increased the likelihood of becoming an innovator in the target industries by 4.6 to 5.7 percentage points. At the same time, R&D expenditures decreased by 19.4% on average for firms in target industries, while access to external know-how, cooperation with public scientific institutes, and the availability of suitable R&D personnel increased.
Does it matter if you speak with a regional accent? Speaking immediately reveals something of one's own social and cultural identity, be it consciously or unconsciously. Perceiving accents involves ...not only reconstructing such imprints but also augmenting them with particular attitudes and stereotypes. Even though we know much about attitudes and stereotypes that are transmitted by, e.g. skin color, names or physical attractiveness, we do not yet have satisfactory answers how accent perception affects human behavior. How do people act in economically relevant contexts when they are confronted with regional accents? This paper reports a laboratory experiment where we address this question. Participants in our experiment conduct cognitive tests where they can choose to either cooperate or compete with a randomly matched male opponent identified only via his rendering of a standardized text in either a regional accent or standard accent. We find a strong connection between the linguistic performance and the cognitive rating of the opponent. When matched with an opponent who speaks the accent of the participant's home region--the in-group opponent--, individuals tend to cooperate significantly more often. By contrast, they are more likely to compete when matched with an accent speaker from outside their home region, the out-group opponent. Our findings demonstrate, firstly, that the perception of an out-group accent leads not only to social discrimination but also influences economic decisions. Secondly, they suggest that this economic behavior is not necessarily attributable to the perception of a regional accent per se, but rather to the social rating of linguistic distance and the in-group/out-group perception it evokes.
Leadership in Social Movements Dippel, Christian; Heblich, Stephan
The American economic review,
02/2021, Letnik:
111, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
This paper studies the role of leaders in the social movement against slavery that culminated in the US Civil War. Our analysis is organized around a natural experiment: leaders of the failed German ...revolution of 1848–1849 were expelled to the United States and became antislavery campaigners who helped mobilize Union Army volunteers. Towns where Forty-Eighters settled show two-thirds higher Union Army enlistments. Their influence worked through local newspapers and social clubs. Going beyond enlistment decisions, Forty-Eighters reduced their companies’ desertion rate during the war. In the long run, Forty-Eighter towns were more likely to form a local chapter of the NAACP.
Why are the east sides of formerly industrial cities more deprived? To answer this question, we use individual-level census data and create historical pollution patterns derived from the locations of ...5,000 industrial chimneys and an atmospheric model. We show that this observation results from path-dependent neighborhood sorting that began during the Industrial Revolution, as prevailing winds blew pollution eastward. Past pollution explains up to 20% of observed neighborhood segregation in 2011, even though coal pollution stopped in the 1970s. We develop a quantitative model to identify the role of neighborhood effects and relocation rigidities underlying this persistence.
Banking and Industrialization Heblich, Stephan; Trew, Alex
Journal of the European Economic Association,
12/2019, Letnik:
17, Številka:
6
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Abstract
We establish a causal role for banking access in the spread of the Industrial Revolution over the period 1817–1881 by exploiting unique employment data from 10,528 parishes across England ...and Wales and a novel instrument. We estimate that a one standard deviation increase in 1817 finance employment increases annualized industrial employment growth by 0.93 percentage points. We establish the role of structural transformation as an underlying growth mechanism and show that banking access: (i) increases the industrial employment share; (ii) stimulates urbanization; and (iii) fosters inter-industry transition to high TFP, intermediate and capital-intensive sub-sectors.
In this article, we describe the use of ivmediate, a new command to estimate causal mediation effects in instrumental-variables settings using the framework developed by Dippel et al. (2020, ...unpublished manuscript). ivmediate allows estimation of a treatment effect and the share of this effect that can be attributed to a mediator variable. While both treatment and mediator can be potentially endogenous, a single instrument suffices to identify both the causal treatment and the mediation effects.
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