This paper examines the relationship between zero-sum thinking, political views, and individual well-being in Switzerland. Zero-sum thinking refers to the belief that resources are finite, and that one person’s gain must come at the expense of another. Using survey data from over 11,000...

In theory, voter attitudes towards policy changes (e.g., whether to increase the minimum wage) ought to depend on their beliefs about the current level of the relevant policy variable. In this paper, I test this hypothesis using a large-scale (n = 5, 000) and pre-registered survey experiment...

Democratic societies depend on citizens following rules even when those rules are set by political opponents. Rising polarization may threaten this behavior. We test the impact of polarization on rule compliance in the United States across three pre-registered waves (May and November 2024; April 2025; n...

We provide causal evidence that immigration has contributed to the polarization of American politics. Using an ancestry-based shift-share instrument, we study immigration flows into U.S. counties between 1992 and 2016. Counties exposed to larger immigrant inflows become more polarized both in...

Gesellschaftspolitische Diskussionen sind in deutschen Unternehmen weit verbreitet: Nur fünf Prozent der befragten Personalverantwortlichen berichten, diese überhaupt nicht wahrzunehmen. Aus Sicht der Beschäftigten bestätigt sich die Relevanz: Acht von zehn Beschäftigte in Deutschland...

We study the communication strategies on Twitter/X of 367 political leaders in 21 countries, focusing on electoral competition between populists and non-populists. We measure polarization by the ease with which the leader can be classified as populist or not, conditional on his tweet. We find...

Technocracy has come to be increasingly regarded as a threat to representative democracy. Significant attention has thus been recently devoted to exploring public preferences towards technocratic institutions. Elected policymakers’ attitudes have instead not been investigated as...

This paper examines the relationship between zero-sum thinking, political views, and individual well-being in Switzerland. Zero-sum thinking refers to the belief that resources are finite, and that one person's gain must come at the expense of another. Using survey data from over 11,000...

This paper shows how enduring agrarian institutions shaped the long-run political consequences of historical shocks. We study Italy's sharecropping system (mezzadria)-a centuries-old fifty-fifty contract that structured rural relations across central Italy-and link its prewar prevalence to...

This paper investigates whether political partisanship and political narratives affect voters' opinions about public finances. In a novel survey experiment, we test the causal effect of pro-consolidation and pro-public investment narratives used in German general election campaigns on...

How does polarization - as measured by mistreatment of political rivals - spread? In an online experiment, participants choose between splitting financial resources equally or discriminating against a member of the opposing political party. We vary the information subjects receive about others'...

Seit Jahren verzeichnen Gewerkschaften in Deutschland massive Mitgliederverluste. Während die Mitgliederzahlen des Deutschen Gewerkschaftsbundes (DGB) nach der deutschen Wiedervereinigung Anfang der 1990er Jahre noch die 10-Millionen-Marke überschritten hatten, sind laut Angaben des DGB im...

Flamino et al. (2023) estimate the levels of ideological polarization and echo chamber behavior for Twitter (now X) users during the 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidential elections using political bias classification and network analysis methods. Using 873 million tweets, they find a decline in the...

We present a self- and social-signaling model formalizing findings in political psychology that moral and political judgments stem primarily from intuition and emotion, while reasoning serves to rationalize these intuitions to maintain an image of impartiality. In social interactions, agents’...

We study how preferences for migration-related narratives differ between private and public contexts and how social media fuel opinion polarization. Using a German representative sample (n=1,226), we found that individuals, especially from the left and center, avoided publicly endorsing...

Political polarization is an increasing global concern. Although recent research suggests that media exposure can mitigate polarization through persuasion, it is unclear whether polarized individuals are willing to engage with diverse news sources, especially in electoral autocracies where...

Over the past two decades, support for Eurosceptic parties has climbed from fringe to nearly one-third of voters. Promising renewed prosperity through less European integration, these parties imply Euroscepticism is a 'free lunch.' Drawing on an original panel of 1,166 European NUTS-3 regions...

Rising political polarization generates significant negative externalities for democratic institutions and economic stability, yet scalable interventions to reduce polarization remain scarce. In this paper, I study whether AI chatbots can reduce political polarization. In two preregistered...

Part I. Introduction -- Chapter 1. Introduction -- Part II. Theoretical Framework -- Chapter 2. Political Discontent: Specificity, Trajectory, and Discontent -- Chapter 3. The Unique Problem of Political Disaffection -- Chapter 4. Digital Platforms and their Democratic Role -- Chapter 5....

Given the recent reconcentration of the economy in many private industries, the impact of working in firms of different sizes on occupational and political outcomes is of renewed interest. Using micro-level data for the US and Germany, two most dissimilar cases in terms of labor market and...