Research

Media Coverage: [EurekAlert] [TUM] [COOLIS] [ScienceBlog] [Phys.org][Lausitzer Rundschau][Research in Bavaria] 

Abstract: Under which conditions does populist success propagate far-right extremism? This paper examines how an information shock about the acceptance of xenophobic positions spurs an increase in far-right protests in more liberal areas in Germany. Using staggered state elections between 2014 and 2017 as a quasi-natural experiment, I show that far-right protests are unlashed in more liberal areas which were “shocked” by the surprising results of the newly emerging rightwing populist AfD party (“Alternative für Deutschland”) in the broader population. The results are robust to demographic controls, unemployment or refugee influx. Tweets referring to the populist party might impede or induce protests depending on their content.

Media Coverage: [Folha de St.Paulo] [NiemanLab]

Abstract: We study how AI-generated misinformation affects demand for trustworthy news, using data from a field experiment by a major German outlet, Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ). Readers were randomly assigned to a treatment highlighting the challenge of distinguishing real from AI-generated images. The treatment raised concern with misinformation (0.3 s.d.) and reduced trust in news (0.1 s.d.), including SZ. Importantly, it affected post-survey browsing behavior: daily visits to SZ digital content rose by 2.5% in the immediate aftermath of the treatment. Moreover, we find that subscriber retention increased by 1.1% after five months, corresponding to about a one-third drop in attrition rate. Results are consistent with a model where the relative value of trustworthy news sources increases with the prevalence of misinformation, which may thus boost engagement with those sources even while lowering trust in news content. 

Previous draft (September 2017): [Munich WP]

Media Coverage: [ZEIT online] [Times] [Bloomberg] [Ara] [Economist] [Dagens Nyheter]

Abstract: We argue that persistence of right-wing ideology can explain the recent rise of populism. Shifts in the supply of party platforms interact with an existing demand, giving rise to hitherto invisible patterns of persistence. The emergence of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) offered German voters a populist right-wing option with little social stigma attached. We show that municipalities that expressed strong support for the Nazi party in 1933 are more likely to vote for the AfD. These dynamics are not generated by a concurrent rightward shift in political attitudes, nor by other factors or shocks commonly associated with right-wing populism. 

Abstract: We study whether right-wing populists benefited from the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Exploiting variation in COVID-19 incidence stemming from the idiosyncratic timing of superspreader events in early 2020, we find a spike in online engagement with populists in European regions with higher infection rates. We document a similar boost in populist support in French municipal elections as well as individual-level British and Dutch survey data. Declining institutional trust, intensifying outgroup hostility, and opposition to government restrictions, these varied sources suggest, fueled the populist surge. The findings broaden our understanding of the types of societal shocks that foster extreme politics. 

Abstract: We provide novel evidence on a contagion effect of right-wing populism in the political arena. Using several thousand digitized speeches from the German parliament, we show that exposure to right-wing populist politicians makes non-populist politicians slant their parliamentary speeches towards the populist rhetoric. We measure similarity to populist rhetoric via unsupervised cosine similarity to parliamentary speeches from AfD politicians. We validate our measure using manifestly populist speeches at populist rallies and a supervised dictionary method. We exploit exogenous variation from the allocation rule for committee members in the German Parliament to identify a causal estimate. We find that an additional AfD member in a shared committee of 20 politicians is associated with a 0.2 increase in standardized AfD cosine similarity. The effect remains robust to including party, month, and speaker fixed effects.

Abstract: This paper sheds light on a positive unintended effect of optimising the educational system. A major school reform in Germany reduced the total years of schooling from nine to eight years and, thus, produced younger graduates. We show that these graduates show higher trust in EU institutions compared to untreated individuals. As the reform was purely labour-market oriented, this side-effect of the reform is unexpected. We argue that the increase in trust is connected to treated individuals using their “extra” year after graduation to take a gap-year, for example, for volunteering abroad. We show that due to the reform significantly more individuals take time off after graduation before continuing with either university, an apprenticeship, or employment. Half of our sample of sabbatical participants do this in form of voluntary services. Volunteering abroad (for example in other European countries) has largely gained in popularity over the past decade. This international experience can contribute to trust in European Parliament and Commission. We show that the increase in trust in EU institutions is not due to an increase in general or specifically trust in politics amongst treated individuals. We survey previous research in order to assess further potential ways how the reform may impact EU institutions. The increase in gap year participation appears to be the most likely channel for the observed effect.