Working papers

• Under review at the European Journal of Political Economy

• Abstract: Are government-imposed restrictions on citizen movement in a pandemic politically optimal? Is there a level of restrictions that a majority will be ready to tolerate? The answers emerge from an extended voter preferences framework, where citizens living in a pandemic choose their vaccination status, and some are vaccine-hesitant. The model demonstrates that a society will choose harder restrictions when its voters are more productive or their vaccine salience is higher. However, the productivity and salience effects are mitigated by the government's capacity to provide fiscal transfers. Zero restrictions emerge as politically optimal under fairly reasonable assumptions, e.g. in societies with sufficiently high vaccine hesitancy or low productivity. Canton-level evidence from the 2021 Swiss referendum on expanding COVID-19 restrictions offers strong support for the theory. A rich set of policy implications completes the analysis.

• Under review at Advances in Economics Education

• Abstract: Out-of-term classroom time to review exam-related material is widespread. However, despite the investment in organizing and running the review sessions, their causal effect on exam performance remains unknown. Using individual-level data from a quasi-experiment, this paper identifies the effect of a review session on exam performance in a large undergraduate economics course in the UK. Contrary to pedagogical priors, the effect is insignificant. It is not driven by selection bias and remains insignificant in a series of robustness checks. The puzzling irrelevance of review sessions is discussed. A low-cost response would be to schedule review sessions closer to the exam. 

       The paper in a nutshell: A theory of how a society chooses restrictions on movement during a pandemic when its citizens can choose whether to get a vaccine, backed up by evidence from Switzerland, and leading to useful behavioural policy prescriptions for a society facing a pandemic.

• Under review at the Journal of Comparative Economics

• Read the working paper