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.

"Ethnic Inequality and Economic Growth: Evidence from Harmonized Satellite Data" (with Andreas Link)

We provide evidence that income inequality across ethnic groups reduces economic growth. This result is obtained based on a novel and comprehensive dataset of harmonized Gini indices on ethnic inequality for countries and sub-national units between 1992 and 2013. Our approach exploits differentials in nighttime lights (NTL) across ethnic homelands, using new techniques to harmonize NTL series across geographic regions and years to address concerns about spatial and temporal incomparability of satellite photographs. Our measures show that ethnic inequality is widespread across countries and has decreased over time. Our identification strategy exploits the artificiality of sub-national borders to construct instrumental variables for ethnic inequality. The negative effect of ethnic inequality is caused by increasing conflict and decreasing public goods provision.

"Taxation after Crises" (with Clemens Fuest,  Niklas Potrafke and Fabian Ruthardt)

Little is known about how policymakers adjust tax policies in response to crises. We use novel and granular data on reforms of tax rates and tax bases for six tax types (22 developed and emerging economies, 1962-2014) and examine tax policies in late stages of crises. Our sample covers 217 severe crises, including financial crises, natural disasters, and economic recessions. The results show that governments tend to increase taxes after crises. The effect is particularly large for financial crises and natural disasters. Tax increases occur mostly during the first post-crisis year and mainly affect corporate and personal income taxes and the VAT. Paradoxically the extent of the tax hikes is decreasing in the pre-crisis level of public debt. [FAZ Article]

Further Work in progress: 

Working Paper


Boumans, D., Gründler, K. , Potrafke, N., and Ruthardt, F.  (2022): Political Leaders and Macroeconomic Expectations: Evidence from a Global Survey Experiment, CESifo Working Paper No.9974 (Conditionally accepted, Journal of Public Economics) [Working Paper] [EconPol][n-tv][Der Standard]

Fuest, C., Gründler, K. Potrafke, N. and Ruthardt, F. (2021): Read My Lips? Taxes and Elections, CESifo Working Paper No.9401. (Revise and Resubmit, Journal of Public Economics) [Working Paper] [Policy Paper] [FAS Article] [Nord News] [Helsinki Times] 

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 Feichtmayer, J. (2021): Global Evidence on Misperceptions and Preferences for Redistribution, CESifo Working Paper No.9381. (submitted) [Working Paper] 

Gründler, K. and Potrafke, N. (2023): Aging, Retirement, and Aggregate Productivity, Working Paper, (submitted). 

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

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]