Exit polls and voter turnout in the 2017 French elections 

Revue économique, 2024, 75(2),  353-369 

with Alberto Grillo

Belgian and Swiss media regularly interfere in French elections by releasing polls and predictions before polling stations close. We exploit the unusual timing and degree of confidence of polls in the second round of the 2017 presidential election to investigate their effect on voter turnout. Our analysis compares turnout rates at different times on the election day, in the first and second round, and with respect to the 2012 and 2022 elections. We observe a significant decrease in turnout after the exit polls’ publication. The effect amounts to 1.1 percentage points in the triple-differences comparison with the 2022 election and is stronger in departments close to the Belgian border. We also find suggestive evidence of a small underdog effect, which may have reduced the winning margin by up to 1 percentage point. 

Exposure to worrisome topics can increase cognitive performance when incentivized by a performance goal

Scientific Reports, 2024, 14(1), 1204. 

with Tomothée Demont and Daniela Horta Sáenz

Worrisome topics, such as climate change, economic crises, or pandemics including Covid-19, are increasingly present and pervasive due to digital media and social networks. Do worries triggered by such topics affect the cognitive capacities of young adults? In an online experiment during the Covid-19 pandemic (N=1503), we test how the cognitive performance of university students responds when exposed to topics discussing (i) current adverse mental health consequences of social restrictions or (ii) future labor market hardships linked to the economic contraction. Moreover, we study how such a response is affected by a performance goal. We find that the labor market topic increases cognitive performance when it is motivated by a goal, consistent with a ‘tunneling effect’ of scarcity or a positive stress effect. However, we show that the positive reaction is mainly concentrated among students with larger financial and social resources, pointing to an inequality-widening mechanism. Conversely, we find limited support for a negative stress effect or a ‘cognitive load effect’ of scarcity, as the mental health topic has a negative but insignificant average effect on cognitive performance. Yet, there is a negative response among psychologically vulnerable individuals when the payout is not conditioned on reaching a goal. 

Media Coverage: Dialogues Economiques

Can you spot a scam? Measuring and improving scam identification ability

Journal of Development Economics, 2023, 165, 103147. 

with Elif Kubilay  ⓡ Lisa Spantig ⓡ Jana Cahlíkova ⓡ  Lucy Kaaria  

The expansion of digital financial services leads to severe consumer protection issues such as fraud and scams. As these potentially decrease trust in digital services, especially in developing countries, avoiding victimization has become an important policy objective. In an online experiment, we first investigate how well individuals in Kenya identify phone scams using a novel measure of scam identification ability. We then test the effectiveness of scam education, a commonly used approach by organizations for fraud prevention. We find that common tips on how to spot scams do not significantly improve individuals’ scam identification ability, i.e., the distinction between scams and genuine messages. This null effect is driven by an increase in correctly identified scams and a decrease in correctly identified genuine messages, indicating overcaution. Additionally, we find suggestive evidence that genuine messages with scam-like features are misclassified more often, highlighting the importance of a careful design of official communication. 

Media Coverage: IPA Blog VOXEU Article Dialogues Economiques

What Do Parents Want? Parental Spousal Preferences in China

Economic Development and Cultural Change, 2023, 71(3), 903-939. 

With Weiwei Ren, Jeanne Bovet, Paul Seabright and Charlotte Wang

In many societies, parents are involved in selecting a spouse for their child, integrating this with decisions about premarital investment such as education. Do spousal preferences of parents and children conflict? We estimate parents’ spousal preferences based on survey choices between random profiles, elicited from parents or other relatives who actively search for a spouse on behalf of their adult child in Kunming, China. We simulate marriage outcomes based on preferences for age and education and compare them with patterns in the general population and with the preferences of a survey of students. The common concern that there may be aversion to highly educated or high-earning wives is somewhat corroborated in parents’ preferences but not in students’ preferences, nor in outcomes, where homogamy is common and wives who are more educated than husbands are as common as husbands who are more educated than wives. Parents prefer wives younger than their husbands, yet most couples are the same age, an outcome consistent with student preferences. Overall, divergences between parental and child preferences exist but are neither major nor very influential in explaining observed outcomes. Fears that highly educated women face diminished marriage prospects appear less serious than often claimed. 

Media Coverage: Dialogues Economiques

God Insures Those Who Pay? Formal Insurance and Religious Offerings in Ghana

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2020, 135(4), 1799-1848 

With Emmanuelle Auriol, Julié Lassébie, Amma Panin and Paul Seabright

This article provides experimental support for the hypothesis that insurance can be a motive for religious donations. We randomize enrollment of members of a Pentecostal church in Ghana into a commercial funeral insurance policy. Then church members allocate money between themselves and a set of religious goods in a series of dictator games with significant stakes. Members enrolled in insurance give significantly less money to their own church compared with members who only receive information about the insurance. Enrollment also reduces giving toward other spiritual goods. We set up a model exploring different channels of religiously based insurance. The implications of the model and the results from the dictator games suggest that adherents perceive the church as a source of insurance and that this insurance is derived from beliefs in an interventionist God. Survey results suggest that material insurance from the church community is also important and we hypothesize that these two insurance channels exist in parallel. 

Media Coverage:  VOXEU Article Dialogues Economiques

U.S. Churches' Response to COVID-19: Results from Facebook

Covid Economics, 2020, Issue 61

With Paul Seabright

This study investigates U.S. churches' response to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic by looking at their public Facebook posts. For religious organizations, in-person gatherings are at the heart of their activities. Yet religious in-person gatherings have been identified as some of the early hot spots of the pandemic, but there has also been controversy over the legitimacy of public restrictions on such gatherings. Our sample contains information on church characteristics and Facebook posts for nearly 4000 churches that posted at least once in 2020. The share of churches that offer an online church activity on a given Sunday more than doubled within two weeks at the beginning of the pandemic (the first half of March 2020) and stayed well above baseline levels. Online church activities are positively correlated with the local pandemic situation at the beginning, but uncorrelated with most state interventions. After the peak of the first wave (mid April), we observe a slight decrease in online activities. We investigate heterogeneity in the church responses and find that church size and worship style explain differences consistent with churches facing different demand and cost structures. Local political voting behavior, on the other hand, explains little of the variation. Descriptive analysis suggests that overall online activities, and the patterns of heterogeneity, remain unchanged through end-November 2020. 

Parent-offspring conflict over mate choice: An experimental investigation in China

British Journal of Psychology, 2018, 109(4), 674-693 

With Jeanne Bovet, Weiwei Ren, Charlotte Wang and Paul Seabright

Both parents and offspring have evolved mating preferences that enable them to select mates and children-in-law to maximize their inclusive fitness. The theory of parent–offspring conflict predicts that preferences for potential mates may differ between parents and offspring: individuals are expected to value biological quality more in their own mates than in their offspring's mates and to value investment potential more in their offspring's mates than in their own mates. We tested this hypothesis in China using a naturalistic ‘marriage market’ where parents actively search for marital partners for their offspring. Parents gather at a public park to advertise the characteristics of their adult children, looking for a potential son or daughter-in-law. We presented 589 parents and young adults from the city of Kunming (Yunnan, China) with hypothetical mating candidates varying in their levels of income (proxy for investment potential) and physical attractiveness (proxy for biological quality). We found some evidence of a parent–offspring conflict over mate choice, but only in the case of daughters, who evaluated physical attractiveness as more important than parents. We also found an effect of the mating candidate's sex, as physical attractiveness was deemed more valuable in a female potential mate by parents and offspring alike. 

For Better or for Babies: Fertility Constraints and Marriage in China

CEPR Discussion Paper, AMSE Working Paper 

With Lucie Giorgi

We examine how the 2015 relaxation of China’s one-child policy affected marriage outcomes. Before the reform, some groups were already permitted to have two children. In China, where the sex ratio is heavily skewed toward men, being exempt from the one-child constraint may have been a desirable characteristic for marriage, increasing men's marriage odds. Using detailed policy data on exemptions and individual data from 2010-2018, we find that after the relaxation, men previously allowed a second child are less likely to marry compared to those not allowed. There is no effect for women. The results suggest that differential fertility constraints distorted who got married by advantaging certain men when there was a demand for a second child and strong marriage competition. Furthermore, suggestive evidence shows that the relaxation increased matching by education when exemptions were moderately widespread, indicating that fertility constraints also shaped who married whom.

Anticipated Fertility and Educational Investment: Evidence from the One-Child Policy in China

CEPR Discussion Paper, R&R Economic Development and Cultural Change

Children can be costly both in terms of finances and time. Those who want children and their families may take this into account when making educational decisions earlier in life. Does the number of future anticipated children affect educational investment in parents-to-be? During the one-child policy in China, second-child permits allowed specific groups to have a second child without paying a fine. Changes in the eligibility criteria for this permit provide geographic and temporal variation in the cost of having a second child. I first show that second-child permits indeed had an effect on the number of children: They strongly increased the likelihood of having a second child in the 1990s and 2000s. I then investigate changes in the eligibility rules when individuals are about to finish mandatory education. I compare the educational attainment of those who fulfilled an eligibility criterion for a second-child permit at secondary school age with those who did not. I find that eligibility at secondary school age increases the likelihood of continuing education. Anticipating another child seems to increase educational investment, as the effect is concentrated among those predicted to have only one child when not eligible. This effect, clearer for men than for women, can be explained by the high costs of raising children in China. 

To Leave or Not to Leave: The Role of Aspirations and Networks in Shaping Young Women’s Migration Decisions in Lebanon

ERF Working Paper 

With Karine Moukaddem, Marion Dovis, Joséphine Kass-Hanna, and Léa Bou Khater

Migration aspirations, the hope and ambition to leave the origin country, are recognized as the key initial step that may lead to actual migration. Drawing on data from a nationally representative survey conducted in Lebanon among 1,500 women aged 18-35, this study investigates the role of social networks and life aspirations (education, career, marriage and fertility) in shaping migration aspirations, in a context of severe economic crisis and massive emigration wave. Based on a stylized model that integrates aspirations into a standard utility maximization problem, we postulate that individuals aspire to migrate if their life aspirations cannot be locally fulfilled. Furthermore, we focus on local networks to examine their influence on women’s migration aspirations. Our analysis reveals a peer effect, where a higher share of women’s network planning migration increases their migration aspirations. Additionally, unlikely career and education aspirations, but not family aspirations, are associated with a stronger desire to emigrate. These findings highlight the need for a nuanced approach to understanding the interplay between social networks, aspirations, and migration decisions. They offer valuable insights for researchers and policymakers aiming to address the drivers of women’s emigration in Lebanon and other crisis contexts. 

Lebanon’s Untapped Potential: The Persistent Challenge of High Economic Inactivity among Young Women

ERF Policy Brief, 2023

With Léa Bou-Khater, Marion Dovis, Joséphine Kass-Hanna, and Karine Moukaddem K.

Faith-based Platforms - with Emmanuelle Auriol, Amma Panin, and Paul Seabright - Working paper coming soon

Risk and Religiosity - with Lucy Grinker, Poorvi Iyer, Savita Kulkarni, Amma Panin, and Shravani Warwantkar - Experiment in planning

Effects of Scam Perceptions - with Laura Barasa, Elif Kubilay, and Lisa Spantig - Online experiment scheduled