Previous research has established that good-looking political candidates win more votes. We extend this line of research by examining differences between parties on the left and on the right of the political spectrum. Our study combines data on personal votes in real elections with a web survey...

We propose that false beliefs about the own current economic status are an important factor for explaining populist attitudes. Along with the subjects' receptiveness to right-wing populism, we elicit their perceived relative income positions in a representative survey of German households. We...

I analyze Dutch panel data that contains rich information on voting, political opinions, and personality traits. I show that "adversarial" preferences - competitiveness, negative reciprocity, distrust, and selfishness - are strong predictors of right-wing and populist political preferences....

We examine how cultural norms shape attitudes toward immigration. Our causal identification relies on comparing students who moved across the East-West border after German reunification with students who moved within former East Germany. Students who moved from East to West became more positive...

How do emotions affect policy views on immigration? How do they influence the way people process and respond to factual information? We address these questions using a survey experiment in Italy, which randomly exposes around 7,000 participants to (i) sensational news about immigrant crimes,...

This paper develops a theoretical framework that makes predictions on (a) the conditions under which a populist party decides to run and the policy position it takes and (b) voters' response under different electoral systems. We test these predictions using data on Italian municipal elections...

We investigate the relationship between political attitudes and prosociality in a survey of a representative sample of the U.S. population during the first summer of the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that an experimental measure of prosociality correlates positively with adherence to protective...

The income gradient in political participation is a widely accepted stylized fact. This article asks how income effects on political involvement unfold over time. Using nine panel datasets from six countries, it analyzes whether income changes have short-term effects on political involvement,...

We exploit a large exogenous shock to study the determinants of college attendance and the role played by one's environment. We analyze whether, and how quickly, adolescents' college plans are adapted, explore factors leading to the adjustment, and examine how these factors ultimately impact...

Does poor air quality affect decision-making? We study this question based on elections, in which millions of people decide on the same issue on the same day in different locations. We use county-level data from 64 federal and state elections in Germany over a nineteen-year period and exploit...