Selected publications

Other (new) publications

Expected Transport Accessibility Improvement and House Prices: Evidence from the Construction of an Undersea Road Tunnel System

with Peter Molnár

Mikula, Š., & Molnár, P. (2023). Expected transport accessibility improvement and house prices: Evidence from the construction of an undersea road tunnel system. Journal of Transport Geography, 111, 103649.

This paper studies the impact of expected transport accessibility improvement on house prices. We identify the effect exploiting a quasi-natural experiment created by the approval and construction of the Ryfast tunnel system in Rogaland, Norway, which shortened the traveling time to the affected municipality from 62 to 24 minutes. Estimates of a repeated sales model in a difference-in-differences framework show that the expectation of improvement in transport accessibility connected with the construction of the tunnel system led to an increase in house prices by 12.8% on average. That effect grew as the opening of the tunnel drew closer and was driven by less valuable houses.

Social Capital and Mobility: An Experimental Study

with Rostislav Staněk and Ondřej Krčál

KRČÁL, O., MIKULA, Š., & STANĚK, R. (2022). Social capital and mobility: An experimental study. Rationality and Society, 10434631221134176.

Theoretical models of social capital (David, Janiak, and Wasmer 2010; Bräuninger and Tolciu 2011) predict that communities may find themselves in one of two equilibria: one with a high level of local social capital and low migration or one with a low level of local social capital and high migration. There is empirical literature suggesting that immigrants who join communities high in social capital are more likely to invest in local social capital and that the whole community will then end up in the equilibrium with high local social capital and low migration. However, this literature suffers from the selection of immigrants, which makes the identification challenging. In order to test the causal influence of the initial level of local social capital, we take the setup used in the theoretical models into the laboratory. We treat some communities by increasing the initial level of social capital without affecting the equilibrium outcomes. We find that while most communities end up in one of the two equilibria predicted by the theoretical models, the treated communities are more likely to converge to the equilibrium with a high level of local social capital and low migration.

Homophily in Voting Behavior: Evidence from Preferential Voting 

with Lucie Coufalová and Michal Ševčík

COUFALOVÁ, Lucie, Štěpán MIKULA a Michal ŠEVČÍK. Homophily in voting behavior: Evidence from preferential voting. Kyklos. Wiley, 2023, vol. 76, no. 2, pp. 281-300. ISSN 0023-5962. doi:10.1111/kykl.12328..

Homophily---the preference for people similar in their characteristics---is a strong determinant of many types of human relationships. It affects, for example, whom we marry and potentially also whom we vote for. We use data on preferential voting from eight (1996--2021) Czech parliamentary elections matched with census and administrative data to identify the effect of homophily on voting behavior. The Czech system of preferential voting is well suited to an analysis of homophilic preferences, as it enables us to filter out preferences for political parties and focus solely on candidates’ individual background characteristics. We identify the effect of homophily on a sample of 6,844,538 observations from small municipalities that are not likely to be affected by potential electoral list optimization. We find that a one percent increase in the share of a municipality’s population whose education level or age are the same as the candidate’s increases the number of preferential votes the given candidate receives by 0.5% or 0.2% respectively. We also find evidence for strong geographical homophily as living in the municipality substantially increases the number of preferential votes a candidate receives.

BOE, Kristine, Therese JORDAL, Štěpán MIKULA and Peter MOLNAR. Do political risks harm development of oil fields? Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization. AMSTERDAM: ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV, 2019, vol. 157, No 1, p. 338-358. ISSN 0167-2681. doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2018.01.005.

MIKULA, Štěpán a Josef MONTAG. Does homeownership hinder labor market activity? Evidence from housing privatization and restitution. JOURNAL OF HOUSING ECONOMICS. UNITED STATES: ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE, 2023, roč. 61, č. 101949, 13 s. ISSN 1051-1377. doi:10.1016/j.jhe.2023.101949. (replication script and list of houses)

MIKULA, Štěpán a Tommaso REGGIANI. Residential-Based Discrimination in the Labor Market. The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy. Germany: De Gruyter, 2022, vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 373-388. ISSN 1935-1682. doi:10.1515/bejeap-2021-0331.

GUZI, Martin and Štěpán MIKULA. Reforms That Keep You at Home: The Effects of Economic Transition on Migration. Economics of Transition and Institutional Change. John Wiley & Sons, 2021. ISSN 0967-0750. doi:10.1111/ecot.12287.

HUBER, Peter and Štěpán MIKULA. Social capital and willingness to migrate in post-communist countries. Empirica. DORDRECHT: SPRINGER, 2019, vol. 46, No 1, p. 31-59. ISSN 0340-8744. doi:10.1007/s10663-018-9417-7.

COUFALOVÁ, Lucie, Štěpán MIKULA and Libor ŽÍDEK. Competitiveness of Czechoslovak Exports under Socialism and its Impact on Industries’ Output Growth after 1989. Economics of Transition and Institutional Change. 2020, vol. 28, No 1, p. 111-135. ISSN 2577-6975. doi:10.1111/ecot.12232.

POLASIK, Michał, Agnieszka HUTERSKA, Rehan IFTIKHAR and Štěpán MIKULA. The impact of Payment Services Directive 2 on the PayTech sector development in Europe. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization. Elsevier, 2020, vol. 178, October, p. 385-401. ISSN 0167-2681. doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2020.07.010.

Working papers

The long-term impact of religion on social capital: lessons from post-war Czechoslovakia

with Tommaso Reggiani and Fabio Sabatini

We exploit a historical experiment that occurred in Czechoslovakia after World War Two to study the drivers of social capital accumulation in an extremely unfavorable environment. Between 1945 and 1948, the Sudetenland became the scene of ethnic cleansing, with the expulsion of nearly three million German speakers and the simultaneous influx of nearly two million resettlers. Focusing on the areas where at least 90% of the population was forced to leave, we show that the municipalities hosting a church built before 1945 developed significantly higher social capital under the communist rule, which persisted after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia and the current days.

Migratory Responses to Air Pollution Reduction: Evidence from Large-scale Desulfurization Programme

with Mariola Pytliková

(R&R in European Economic Review)

This paper examines the causal effects of significant improvement in air quality in formerly heavily polluted areas on migration and re-population patterns. In particular, we exploit a natural experiment in which desulfurization technologies were rapidly implemented in coal-burning power plants in the Czech Republic in the 1990s. These technologies substantially reduced the SO2 concentration to below EU and WHO limits, without per se affecting economic activity. The results based on a difference-in-differences estimator imply that cleaning-up the air reduced emigration from previously heavily polluted municipalities by 24% and increased net migration by 78%. The results are validated in numerous robustness checks and supported by zero effects from placebo tests. Furthermore, we look at heterogeneous effects of cleaner air on population by education and age and find some evidence that the more educated tend to be more sensitive to air quality in their settlement behavior. Finally, we find that the migratory responses to cleaner air tend to be reinforced by existence of stronger social capital and richer man-made amenities. Thus, our results imply that strengthening social capital and investing in better facilities and public services could help to repopulate formerly polluted areas. 

Working papers (old version with a different title): CERGE-EI, IZA DP

Roma and Bureaucrats: A Field Experiment in the Czech Republic

with Josef Montag

(R&R in Labour Economics)

This paper tests for discriminatory treatment of Roma minority by public officials in the Czech Republic. Our focus is on public servants at job centers who work with unemployed individuals and process applications for unemployment benefits. We test for the presence of ethnic and socioeconomic discrimination of Roma by emailing a simple information request and randomly varying signals of ethnicity and literacy. We find substantial evidence for both. Because Roma tend to have lower socioeconomic status, the two sources of discrimination compound for them.

Does Democracy Flourish in the Dark? Regional Development and Democracy Building

with Lucie Coufalová, Michaela Kecskésová, and Michal Ševčík

This paper examines the impact of regional development on democracy building in the Czech Republic following the fall of the Iron Curtain and the autocratic communist regime in 1989. By exploiting the variation in regional development arising from the economic transition process, we identify that regional development, approximated by nighttime light intensity growth, leads to a rise in voter turnout in parliamentary elections. The heightened voter turnout is associated with increased electoral support for pro-system, pro-democratic parties, indicating that regional development facilitates democracy building. Conversely, we find no effect of regional development on the electoral support for the direct successor of the pre-1989 Communist Party. This suggests that while regional development may mitigate anti-system sentiment, it does not eliminate nostalgia for the fallen autocratic regime.

Borders and Population Growth: Evidence from a Century of Border Regime Changes on the Austrian-Czech Border

with Lucie Coufalová, Fanny H. Dellinger, and Peter Huber

We analyze the impacts of three major unexpected border regime changes that occurred during the course of 20th century on population growth along the Austrian-Czech border. Using historical municipal-level census data reaching back to 1880, we find no effects of the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1919) but strong and oppositely signed effects of the drawing (1948) and the fall (1989) of the Iron Curtain in both countries. Our findings indicate that border regimes affect population growth via economic as well as non-economic mechanisms.