Abstract: What factors make aggressive public spending cuts palatable to the electorate? I explore the mitigating role of policy adjustments enacted by local governments in response to national governments’ spending cuts. Empirically, I first quantify the effects of a 2011 health-sector austerity policy, whereby fifteen percent of Romania’s public hospitals were closed by the national government. In a difference-in-differences design, I find that local governments in constituencies affected by a hospital closure significantly increased spending on infrastructure improvements: better local roads, public lighting and access to clean water. I further show that these effects are almost entirely driven by local governments politically-aligned with the responsible national government and, in particular, by local governments in electorally-competitive constituencies. These findings are consistent with a local electoral buffer hypothesis: the electoral incentives of local governments and the policy adjustments they trigger can mitigate the local impact of national spending cuts. Exploiting a second natural experiment, I find additional evidence that allows me to rule out alternative explanations which do not account for the electoral incentives of local governments.

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Abstract:  We empirically study the effects of austerity on electoral support for radical-right parties. For causal inference, we leverage exogenous variation created by a 2013 Italian reform which imposed deficit targets in municipalities with fewer than 5,000 residents. In our main difference-in-discontinuities analysis, we show that austerity policies contribute to radical-right voting. These effects are stronger in municipalities where local fiscal rules are binding — that is, where fiscal adjustments are required to comply with the new institutional framework. We also explore the mechanisms underlying our main result, and find suggestive evidence for an anti-immigration channel, whereby austerity increases the appeal of the anti-immigration rhetoric supported by those on the radical-right. Our findings contribute to a broader literature investigating the economic roots of radical-right voting. 

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Abstract: Why has geographical polarisation increased in recent times? In a simple model, we show that one catalyst is a social learning mechanism whereby policy preferences become more homogeneous within geographical units, yet increasingly heterogeneous between units over time as voters become better informed on the views of those in their vicinity. We study our model's predictions by taking advantage of the delayed implementation of Brexit and its salience in the UK general elections following the 2016 referendum. We ask whether voters updated their Brexit views after observing the referendum's local results, and acted upon their new beliefs in the subsequent elections. To estimate causal electoral effects, we exploit the binary media portrayal of local areas as "Leave" ("Return") depending on whether the local Leave-vote share recorded in the referendum was above (below) fifty percent. Analysing constituency-level longitudinal-data, we document a two percentage-points decrease in the anti-Brexit Liberal Democrat vote share in "Leave-labelled" relative to "Remain-labelled" constituencies, mirrored by an increase for the Conservatives. Our findings constitute novel evidence for contextual information signals causally contributing to geographical polarisation, and have implications for how group-based identities form more broadly.

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Abstract: Although parties are documented to invest significant amounts of resources towards strengthening their hold on local governments, whether mayors benefit their parties in national elections remains an open question. More specifically, it is unclear if mayors are electorally valuable in periods when party-affiliated central governments do not support them via politically discriminatory policies. We address this gap by studying “reverse coat-tails” in a unique setting: under a technocratic central government instituted following an unexpected, exogenous tragic event that forced the previous government’s resignation. Investigating close mayoral races in Romania in a regression discontinuity analysis, we find that local incumbency generated meaningful vote share premiums in the 2016 parliamentary elections. Exploring the underlying mechanism, we retrieve evidence for prospective voting, suggesting that the reverse coattails we document are partially driven by voters’ expectations of future preferential resource allocations by the central government. We show that preferential central policies were implemented after, but not before the national elections, and find that reverse coattails were stronger in constituencies where funds received from the center are an important component of local revenues. 

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Abstract: Extreme weather episodes may increase the salience of climate change and worsen people's well-being. Empirically studying these effects is however challenging, given limited data availability around difficult-to-predict such events. Addressing this issue, I use Google Trends information to assess how climate change salience and people's wellness were affected by an unprecedented mid-July 2022 heatwave in the United Kingdom, when temperatures exceeded 40C for the first time in the country's history. I document a significant rise in the search-intensity for 'climate change', as well as for 'worry' as a marker of psychological distress at the time fo the heatwave. In contrast, I show that similar patterns did not emerge in 2019, when comparably high temperatures were recorded, but when the 40C-threshold was not exceeded. Taken together, my results suggest that the effects of the 2022 heatwave are partially driven by a climate anxiety mechanism, wherein extreme weather episodes constitute negative signals for climate change progression. I conclude by discussing several limitations of my study that future work may tackle.

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Abstract: To reduce the spread of Covid-19 whilst limiting the economic costs of containment policies, governments have introduced geographically-flexible conditional restrictions — measures targeting sub-national areas whose severity depends on the virus’s local incidence rate. I analyze whether conditional measures impact transmission rates via a news-shock effect — that is, by incentivizing indirect actions in anticipation of the policies being carried out. Exploiting a natural experiment from Romania in a regression-discontinuity framework, I provide early empirical evidence in this sense: I find that the Covid-19 incidence rate fell significantly in targeted constituencies following the announcement of a conditional containment measure, but prior to the policy being implemented. My results add to a broader literature on news-driven fluctuations, wherein expectations of future policies can impact immediate behaviors. I conclude by discussing an important avenue for future research. 

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Abstract: Why do politicians rebel and vote against the party line when high stakes bills come to the floor of the legislature? To address that question, we leverage the three so-called Meaningful Votes that took place in the British House of Commons between January and March 2019 on the Withdrawal Agreement that the Conservative government had reached with the European Union. The bill was defeated decisively three times following a major revolt amongst Conservative backbench Members of Parliament (MPs). We find that three factors influenced their rebellion calculus: the MP’s own ideological views, constituency preferences and career concerns. Somewhat paradoxically, the rebellion within the Conservative Party came from MPs who had supported Leave in the 2016 Brexit referendum and from MPs elected in Leave-leaning constituencies. 

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