The relationship between the youth-led "Fridays for Future" climate movement and voting, politician and media behavior in Germany

with Matthias Flückiger, Markus Ludwig, Helmut Rainer, Maria Waldinger & Sebastian Wichert
Published in: Nature Human Behaviour, 2025, 9

We study the relationship between the Fridays for Future climate protest movement in Germany and citizen political behavior. In 2019, crowds of young protesters, mostly under voting age, demanded immediate climate action. Exploiting cell phone-based mobility data and hand-collected information on nearly 4,000 climate protests, we create a highly disaggregated measure of protest participation. Using this measure, we show that Green Party vote shares increased more in counties with higher protest participation (n = 960). To address the possibility of nonrandom protest participation, we use various empirical strategies. Examining mechanisms, we find evidence for three relevant factors: reverse intergenerational transmission of pro-environmental attitudes from children to parents (n = 76,563), stronger climate-related social media presence by Green Party politicians (n = 197,830), and increased local media coverage of environmental issues (n = 47,060). Our findings suggest that youth protests may initiate the societal change needed to overcome the climate crisis. 

Links: [article] [CESifo working paper] [press release] [non-technical summary]
Media Coverage: [Tagesspiegel] [Nature] [Watson] 

How Much Violence Does Football Hooliganism Cause?
with Leander Andres & Helmut Rainer
Published in: Journal of Public Economics, 2023, Vol. 225

This paper quantifies how much of violent crime in society can be attributed to football- related violence. Exploiting rich crime register data, we study the universe of professional football matches played out in Germany's top three football leagues over the period 2011-2015. Our main result shows that violent crime increases by 17 percent on a match day, with associated social costs of roughly 58 million euros annually. Exploring possible mechanisms, we find that the match day effect can be attributed to violence among males in the 18-39 age group, rises to 63 percent on days with high-rivalry derby matches, and that a non-negligible share of it stems from violent crimes committed by group offenders and assaults on police officers. Most of the facts we document can be accommodated by social identity explanations of football hooliganism, while frustration-aggression theories of sports-related violence can explain only some of the findings in isolation.

Links: [article] [CESifo working paper] [press release] [non-technical summary] [tweet]
Media Coverage: [FAZ] [Die Zeit] [ZDF] [Reuters]

Maternity Leave and Children’s Health Outcomes in the Long-Term

Published in: Journal of Health Economics, 2021, Vol. 76

Award: Science Award of the German Health Economics Association

This paper assesses the impact of the length of maternity leave on children’s health outcomes in the long-run. My quasi-experimental design evaluates an expansion in maternity leave coverage from two to six months, which occurred in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1979. The expansion came into effect after a sharp cutoff date and significantly increased the time working mothers stayed at home with their newborns during the first six months after childbirth. Using this cutoff date as a source of exogenous variation, I exploit German hospital registry data, which contains detailed information on the universe of inpatients’ diagnoses from 1995-2014. By tracking the health of treated and control children from age 16 up to age 35, this study provides new insights into the trajectory of health differentials over the life-cycle. I find that the legislative change generated positive long-term health effects: My intention-to-treat estimates show that children born after the implementation of the reform experience fewer hospital admissions and are less likely to be diagnosed with mental and behavioral disorders.

Links: [article] [preprint] [tweet] [press release] [podcast] 

Analysis of the Distribution of Income and Wealth in Germany
Commissioned by: Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs

The results of this project are the basis for the sixth Poverty and Wealth Report of the German Government. The past five Poverty and Wealth Reports have contributed fundamentally to the understanding of the distribution of financial resources and opportunities in the Federal Republic of Germany. At the same time, they have provided important impulses for clarifying what is meant by poverty and wealth in social and economic policy terms.
I was responsible for investigating the relationship between inheritances and wealth inequality (module 9 in the research report, p. 431-442). My key finding is that the share of wealth that is inherited amounts to 35% in West German households. The share increases to 53% when focusing on households that have inherited something in the past.

Links: [project page] [research report] [tweet] [report of the German Government] 

Essays in Applied Microeconometrics

In my doctoral thesis, I strived for answering pressing social questions in the fields of labor and health economics, the economics of crime, and political economy. I exploited intriguing large-scale data sets, various instruments from the data science toolbox, and modern microeconometric techniques to estimate causal and policy-relevant parameters. The word cloud on the right illustrates the words' frequency used in my thesis. 

Links: [publication] [thesis defense (slides)]