Research
Work in Progress
"Policy Advice of Experts, Preferences, and the Macroeconomy: Evidence from a Global Survey Experiment" (with Niklas Potrafke, AEA RCT Registry ID AEARCTR-0006570)
Is policy advice of economic experts driven by the state of the macroeconomy or experts' personal policy preferences? We design a global survey experiment among 1,224 influential experts who provide professional expertise for 109 countries. Our setting combines a randomized information treatment with the natural experiment created by the initial global spread of Covid19 during March 2020. Using open-ended text questions to elicit revealed policy preferences, we find that experts give about equal weight to facts and preferences when providing policy advice.
"Peer Effects in Macroeconomic Expectations" (with Lena Dräger and Niklas Potrafke, AEA RCT Registry AEARCTR-0009479)
Are economic experts influenced by their peers when forming economic expectations and providing policy advice? We design a large-scale international survey among 1,821 experts working in 135 countries, eliciting their expectations about inflation rates, macroeconomic priorities and monetary policy recommendations. We uncover large peer effects: when experts are informed about regional inflation expectations of their colleagues, they substantially adjust their inflation expectations.
"Monetary Policy and Macroeconomic Expectations" (with Michael Lamla, Niklas Potrafke, and Timo Wochner, AEA RCT Registry AEARCTR-0010620)
Consequences of monetary policy are often difficult to understand for households, but they have important macroeconomic impact. This research investigates whether and when economic experts can act as intermediaries. We first design three large-scale surveys among influential economic experts in 21 European countries, Canada, and the US to study how expectation formation of economic experts responds to monetary policy changes. We find that experts' expectations react quickly to changes in interest rates and the tone of monetary policy announcements. Exploring to what extent experts can serve as intermediaries for households, we find that experts' explanations impact inflation expectations of households. Our results suggest that experts can effectively break through the ``veil of inattention'' of monetary policy.
Further Work in progress:
"Do we Need Another Expert? The Willigness to Pay for Expert Advice?" (with Sebastian Blesse, Philipp Heil, and Henning Hermes)
"Becoming an Expert is Never Easy" (with Elisabeth Grewenig, Philipp Lergetporer, Niklas Potrafke, Katharina Werner, and Helen Zeidler)
"The Economic Impact of Female Political Leaders: Evidence from Germany" (with Luisa Dörr, Niklas Potrafke, and Tuuli Tähtinen)
"Electoral Voting at the Precint Level: Evidence from Germany's 400 Largest Cities" (with Luisa Dörr, Philipp Heil, Niklas Potrafke, and Marcel Schlepper) [Die ZEIT Article][Introducing the Local Election Lab (LOCEL)][Policy Paper]
Working Paper
Dräger, L., Gründler, K. and Potrafke, N. (2022): Political Shocks and Inflation Expectations: Evidence from the 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine, CESifo Working Paper No.9649. (Revise and Resubmit, Journal of International Economics) [Working Paper][FAZ Article][Wirtschaftswoche][Handelsblatt][Oekonomenstimme]
Gründler, K. and Potrafke, N. (2020): Fiscal Institutions and Economic Growth, CESifo Working Paper No.8305 (Reject & Resubmit, Journal of Economic Growth) [Working Paper] [FAZ Article]
Blum, J. and Gründler, K. (2020): Political Stability and Economic Prosperity: Are Coups Bad for Growth?, CESifo Working Paper No.8317 (Reject & Resubmit, Journal of Applied Econometrics) [Working Paper] [Oekonomenstimme]
Gründler, K. and Link, A. (2024): Ethnic Inequality and Economic Growth: Evidence from Harmonized Satellite Data, CESifo Working Paper No.11034.
Gründler, K. and Potrafke, N. (2023): Aging, Retirement, and Aggregate Productivity, CESifo Working Paper No.10594 (submitted).
Fuest, C., Gründler, K. Potrafke, N. and Ruthardt, F. (2022): Tax Policies after Crises, Saïd Business School Center for Business Taxation, University of Oxford, Working Paper 2022-01 (submitted). [FAZ Article]
Gründler, K. and Feichtmayer, J. (2021): Global Evidence on Misperceptions and Preferences for Redistribution, CESifo Working Paper No.9381 (submitted). [Working Paper]
Gründler, K. and Potrafke, N. (2020): Sentiments in Empirical Economic Research (previous version: CESifo Working Paper No.7613) [Working Paper] [Policy Paper I] [Policy Paper II] [Wirtschaftswoche]
Publications
Fuest, C., Gründler, K. Potrafke, N. and Ruthardt, F. (2021): Read My Lips? Taxes and Elections, Journal of Public Economics, forthcoming. [Working Paper] [Policy Paper] [FAS Article] [Nord News] [Helsinki Times]
Boumans, D., Gründler, K. , Potrafke, N., and Ruthardt, F. (2024): Political Leaders and Macroeconomic Expectations: Evidence from a Global Survey Experiment, Journal of Public Economics, forthcoming. [Working Paper] [EconPol][n-tv][Der Standard]
Gründler, K., Potrafke, N. and Wochner, T. (2023): The Beauty Premium of Politicians in Office, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, vol.217, pp.298-311. [Wirtschaftswoche][n-tv][RTL][Augsburger Allgemeine][Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (FAS)][Policy Paper][Link to Journal]
Borisova, E., Gründler, K., Hackenberger, A., Harter, A., Potrafke, N., Schors, K. (2021): Crisis Experience and the Deep Roots of COVID-19 Vaccination Preferences, CESifo Working Paper, European Economic Review, vol.160, 104607. [Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ)][tagesschau][Policy Paper][Link to Journal]
Gründler, K. and Krieger, T. (2021): Should We Care (More) About Data Aggregation?, European Economic Review, vol.142, 104010. [Working Paper] [SVMDI Dataset] [Link to Journal]
Gründler, K. and Krieger, T. (2021): Using Machine Learning to Measure Democracy: A Practitioners Guide And a New Updated Dataset for 186 Countries from 1919 to 2019, European Journal of Political Economy, forthcoming [Link to Journal][Working Paper]
Gründler, K. and Hillman, A. (2021): Ambiguous Protection, European Journal of Political Economy, forthcoming [Link to Journal]
Gründler, K. and Köllner, S. (2020): Culture, Diversity, and the Welfare State, Journal of Comparative Economics, forthcoming. [Link to Journal] [Working Paper]
Bachmann, O., Gründler, K., Potrafke, N. und Seiberlich, R. (2019): Partisan bias in inflation expectations, Public Choice, forthcoming. [Link to Journal] [Working Paper] [ABC News]
Gründler, K. and Potrafke, N. (2019): Corruption and economic growth: New empirical evidence, European Journal of Political Economy 60, 101810 [Link to Journal] [Policy Paper] [Working Paper]
Gründler, K. (2019): The vanishing effect of finance on economic development. Macroeconomic Dynamics, forthcoming. [Link to journal]
Gründler, K. and Sauerhammer, S. (2018): Do expectations matter? Reassessing the effect of government spending on keymacroeconomic variables in Germany, Applied Economics Letters 25(15): 1045-1050. [Link to journal]
Gründler, K. and Scheuermyer, P. (2018): Growth effects of inequality and redistribution: What are the transmission channels?, Journal of Macroeconomics 55: 293-313. [Link to journal] [Book] [Blog Post]
Gründler, K. and Köllner, S. (2017): Determinants of government redistribution: Income distribution, development levels, and the role of perceptions, Journal of Comparative Economics 45(4): 930-962. [Link to journal] [Policy Paper I] [Policy Paper II] [Book] [Blog Post] [FAS Article]
Gründler, K. and Krieger, T. (2016): Democracy and growth: Evidence from a machine learning indicator, European Journal of Political Economy 45: 85-107. [Link to Journal] [Wirtschaftswoche Article] [FAZ Article] [SVMDI Dataset]