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This paper explores the political and distributional consequences of sovereign debt and default taking into account that a sizable share of public debt is held by domestic creditors. We develop a quantitative macroeconomic model in which heterogeneous households face idiosyncratic income risk and save in non-state-contingent government bonds. Debt contracts are not enforceable and the government is politically constrained in its policy choices: A fiscal plan is required to receive the support of the majority of households. If neither fiscal plan is approved, the government has to default and to restructure domestic and external debt. Debt crises are characterized by a political conflict. In the course of a crisis, rising debt service costs force the government to cut redistributive spending. While wealthy households benefit from high interest rates on their savings, poor households support a default. Consequently, the approval of the fiscal plan decreases and the likelihood of a political default rises. Political constraints generate sizable welfare costs highlighting that individuals do not internalize the impact of their voting on interest rates and redistributive spending in equilibrium.
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(2023): Preferred policy responses to technological change : Survey evidence from OECD countries Socio-Economic Review. Oxford University Press. 2023, 21(1), pp. 593-615. ISSN 1475-1461. eISSN 1475-147X. Available under: doi: 10.1093/ser/mwac015
How do the labor market risks associated with technological change affect policy preferences? We argue that higher perceptions of technology-related risks should increase support for compensation and decrease support for social investment. We expect the opposite effect for individuals who use technology constantly at work, have a university degree and earn higher incomes. However, as the perception of technology-related employment risks in the latter group of individuals increases, so does their preference for compensatory and protective policy solutions to technological change. Our expectations are confirmed by novel data from a survey of 24 diverse Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries that includes specifically designed questions on technology-related risks and policy preferences. The results suggest that technology-related risks not only correlate with certain demographic and occupational characteristics, but also cross-cut them. Thus, technology-related risks might not only become a source of new cleavages between the losers and winners of technological change, but also the basis for new cross-class coalitions.
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(2023): South to north investment linkages and decent work in Brazil Labour. Wiley. 2023, 37(1), pp. 122-159. ISSN 1121-7081. eISSN 1467-9914. Available under: doi: 10.1111/labr.12239
Over the last 25 years, the BRICs asserted themselves as drivers of globalization. But what does their new-found prominence mean for working conditions at home? Using a novel sub-national database covering outward investment linkages and working conditions in Brazilian municipalities, this study tests whether a direct investment in Europe leads to the introduction of decent working conditions in Brazil. The empirical results provide strong support for the investing-up effect using a mixture of panel data analysis and text analysis. The results suggest that economic integration with high-standard developed countries can act as a powerful mechanism for labor standard improvements in developing countries.
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(2023): Financing the welfare state in times of extreme crisis : public support for health care spending during the Covid-19 pandemic in Germany Journal of European Public Policy. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. 2023, 30(1), pp. 21-40. ISSN 1350-1763. eISSN 1466-4429. Available under: doi: 10.1080/13501763.2021.1977375
Employing new and original survey data collected in three waves (April/May and November 2020 as well as May 2021) in Germany, this paper studies the dynamics of individual-level support for additional health care spending. A first major finding is that, so far, health care spending preferences have not radically changed during the Covid-19 pandemic, at least at the aggregate level. A more detailed analysis reveals, secondly, that individual-level support for additional spending on health care is strongly conditioned by performance perceptions and, to a lesser extent, general political trust. Citizens who regard the system as badly (well) prepared to cope with the crisis are more likely to support (oppose) additional spending. Higher levels of political trust are also positively associated with spending support, but to a lesser degree. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for policy-making and welfare state politics in the post-pandemic era.
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Die Daten der neuen Erhebungswelle des Konstanzer Ungleichheitsbarometers zeigen, dass die Menschen in Deutschland eine weithin zunehmende Ungleichheit von Einkommen und Vermögen wahrnehmen – nicht zuletzt weil die Befragten kaum unterscheiden zwischen der Einkommensungleicheit und der in Realität noch größeren Vermögensungleichheit. Gleichzeitig wird das Ausmaß der Ungleichheit weiterhin in gewisser Hinsicht unterschätzt. Die Zukunftsaussichten
für die jüngere Generation beurteilen viele eher negativ, vor allen Dingen die Anhängerschaft der AfD. Weniger pessimistisch sind Anhänger*innen von CDU/CSU und FDP.
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(2023): Religious practice and student performance : evidence from Ramadan fasting Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization. Elsevier. 2023, 205, S. 100-119. ISSN 0167-2681. eISSN 1879-1751. Verfügbar unter: doi: 10.1016/j.jebo.2022.10.025
We investigate how the intensity of Ramadan affects educational outcomes by exploiting spatio-temporal variation in annual fasting hours. Longer fasting hours are related to increases in student performance in a panel of TIMSS test scores (1995–2019) across Muslim countries but not other countries. Results are confirmed in a panel of PISA test scores (2003–2018) allowing within country-wave comparisons of Muslim to non-Muslim students across Europe. We provide evidence that a demanding Ramadan affects PISA test scores of Muslim students only in cohorts with a large share of co-religionists. This finding is consistent with the hypothesis that shared experiences during more intensive Ramadans facilitate the formation of social capital and a social identity conducive to learning outcomes.
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dc.contributor.editor: Exzellenzcluster „The Politics of Inequality“
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(2023): Comparing Social Perceptions of Culturally Emic Protagonists Using the Stereotype Content Model : A Scale Development and Adaption Process Across Four Languages and Eight Countries Psychological Test Adaptation and Development. Hogrefe. 2023, 4(1), S. 350-362. eISSN 2698-1866. Verfügbar unter: doi: 10.1027/2698-1866/a000067
Cross-cultural comparisons are often based on a single itemset that is used in several cultures and languages being translated semantically correct. In contrast, a new, emic, approach measures the same construct with individually created items for each culture and language. To test this emic approach, the current paper used the stereotype content model (SCM) with its dimensions, warmth, and competence. It is used to compare perceptions of people, residing in different countries, speaking different languages. The current paper reports a study (N = 2,901) that tests whether an adapted scale allows reliable and structurally valid measurement and comparisons of culturally emic protagonists on SCM dimensions across four languages (English, German, Portuguese, Spanish) in eight countries (United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland, Portugal, Brazil, Spain, Argentina). The warmth dimension emerges as largely universal, but the competence dimension is a more culture-specific construct. Cross-cultural comparisons as to the competence dimension should be treated with care.
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(2023): Physical activity improves body image of sedentary adults : Exploring the roles of interoception and affective response Current Psychology. Springer. 2023, 42(30), pp. 26663-26671. ISSN 1046-1310. eISSN 1936-4733. Available under: doi: 10.1007/s12144-022-03641-7
To reduce the number of sedentary people, an improved understanding of effects of exercise in this specific group is needed. The present project investigates the impact of regular aerobic exercise uptake on body image, and how this effect is associated with differences in interoceptive abilities and affective response to exercise. Participants were 29 sedentary adults who underwent a 12-week aerobic physical activity intervention comprised of 30–36 sessions. Body image was improved with large effect sizes. Correlations were observed between affective response to physical activity and body image improvement, but not with interoceptive abilities. Explorative mediation models suggest a neglectable role of a priori interoceptive abilities. Instead, body image improvement was achieved when positive valence was assigned to interoceptive cues experienced during exercise.
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The standard economic model of occupational choice following a basic Roy model emphasizes individual selection and comparative advantage, but the sources of comparative advantage are not well understood. We employ a unique combination of Dutch survey and registry data that links math and language skills across generations and permits analysis of the intergenerational transmission of comparative skill advantages. Exploiting within-family between-subject variation in skills, we show that comparative advantages in math of parents are significantly linked to those of their children. A causal interpretation follows from a novel IV estimation that isolates variation in parent skill advantages due to their teacher and classroom peer quality. Finally, we show the strong influence of family skill transmission on children’s choices of STEM fields.
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(2023): Educational achievement disparities between second-generation and non-immigrant students : Do school characteristics account for tracking effects? European Educational Research Journal. Sage. 2023, 22(3), pp. 297-324. ISSN 2382-1205. eISSN 1474-9041. Available under: doi: 10.1177/14749041211039929
The present article investigates the relationship between the degree of tracking and inequalities in reading literacy of second-generation and non-immigrant students in 28 Western countries. The article takes into account that next to between-school tracking, there are also more subtle forms of tracking, such as tracking within schools or classes. By elaborating how the distinct mechanisms of different tracking characteristics generate achievement inequalities, I assume that any negative effects of tracking on second-generation immigrant students’ achievements are primarily driven by differences in the quality of school environments. Data from the Programme for International Student Assessment 2018 are used and multilevel regression analysis with country-fixed effects are applied. The findings reveal that a higher tracking degree is related to substantial disadvantages in reading literacy for immigrant children. Furthermore, a higher immigrant concentration in schools is associated with immigrant inequalities in reading performance as the degree of tracking increases, whereas unequal distributions of teacher and instructional quality were found to generate inequalities in countries with less tracking. Even though the results are only partly in line with the theory of tracking influences on immigrant achievement disadvantages, they suggest that the interplay between institutional tracking and school characteristics are crucial for learning inequalities.
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(2023): Structure of personal networks and cognitive abilities : A study on a sample of Italian older adults Social Networks. Elsevier. 2023, 74, pp. 71-77. ISSN 0378-8733. eISSN 1879-2111. Available under: doi: 10.1016/j.socnet.2023.02.005
Research in social gerontology has suggested that structural complexity of personal networks could moderate cognitive decline of older adults. In line with the environmental complexity hypothesis, their cognitive functioning would benefit from a high number of cohesive subgroups in their own personal networks, i.e., various social foci, thanks to higher cognitive stimuli from various social interactions. Yet, past studies considered only compositional diversity of networks due to lack of data on alter–alter ties. To fill this gap, we collected survey ego-network data on frequent social contacts (including alter–alter ties) and cognitive functioning on a sample of individuals aged 75 in Brescia, Italy (N = 230). As a proxy for social foci, we detected cohesive subgroups within each respondent’s personal networks. Results showed a positive association between the number of cohesive subgroups and cognitive functioning, regardless of the network size, while controlling for relevant socio-demographic attributes and depression symptoms. Our findings testify to the importance of granular network data in studying the link between social relationships and cognitive functioning.
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(2023): Die Studierendenbefragung in Deutschland : Fokusanalysen zur Attraktivität von Masterstudiengängen
Bisherigen Forschungsergebnissen zufolge hat Deutschland im internationalen Vergleich hohe direkte Übergangsquoten in ein Masterstudium (Neugebauer et al., 2016). Gleichzeitig blieben 2019/20 aber 16 % der Masterstudienplätze an Universitäten und 11 % an HAW unbesetzt (Fabian, 2021; KMK, 2020). Somit gibt es durchaus noch ungenutzte Kapazitäten für (Master-)Studierende im Hochschulsystem und es ist für die Öffentlichkeit, Politik und Wissenschaft gleichermaßen von hohem Interesse, welchen Entscheidungslogiken Studierende bei diesem Übergangsprozess folgen. In diesem DZHW Brief werden, nach einer Darstellung des bisherigen Forschungsstandes zum Übergang ins Masterstudium, Fokusanalysen berichtet, die auf der Grundlage von Ergebnissen der Befragung „Die Studierendenbefragung in Deutschland“ einige offene Fragen klären sollen.
Forschungszusammenhang (Projekte)
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Digital media form an integral part of political actors' communication strategies. They leverage personal websites, Facebook pages, Twitter profiles, and Instagram accounts to disseminate information, communicate policy positions, and mobilize followers. Through digital media, politicians, political parties, and nongovernmental organizations alike are able to reach potentially massive audiences as nearly half the world's population is now connected to the Internet. Compared to other, more traditional media, digital media enable cost-effective, direct, two-way communication with diverse audiences. For political organizations that claim to represent specific ethnic groups, these information channels open up new opportunities and means to achieve their goals. Investigating their activities in the digital space constitutes the topic of this dissertation.
In the first paper (co-authored with Nils B. Weidmann), I present a new dataset for this purpose. It enables researchers to track the online activities of ethnic organizations. The Ethnic Organizations Online (EO2) database systematically captures Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram profiles as well as websites of political organizations with links to ethnic groups in 90 countries. I demonstrate the value of this dataset in three applications: First, I am able to show that separatist organizations are more likely to use Twitter than organizations without secessionist goals. Moreover, I find that organizations in autocracies invest fewer resources into their social media activity as elections approach. Finally, I compare organizations in power to those with opposition status: the former tend to communicate less about political phenomena and activities.
In the second paper (co-authored with Lea Haiges), I examine the content of political communication online, in particular how elections and party competition influence the use of ethnic identity appeals. The basis for this work is provided by hand-coding more than 9000 Facebook and Twitter posts. Based on this data, I train machine learning models that automatically detect identity appeals in over 2~000~000 million social media posts. Analyzing this data with regression models, I find the following: The closer an election, the higher the likelihood that an ethnic party will appeal to ethnic identities. In addition, I show that when more ethnic parties participate in a particular election, this results in a higher number of ethnic identity appeals. Both results provide evidence on axiomatic assumptions of theories of ethnic politics.
In the third paper, I turn to the effects of ethnic organizations' digital communication. I investigate whether individuals' who are exposed to references to ethnic identities online leads to increased identification with those very identities. To study this, I collect more than 200~000 Facebook comments authored in reply to 8000 Facebook posts of ethnic parties. I show that these parties face incentives to mention ethnic identities as this increases the reach of their posts. Their comment sections are more likely to feature comments with negative emotions, references to ethnic identities, and even toxic content. However, I find no evidence that these results extend to citizens' attitudes on the ground.
In summary, this dissertation offers important insights into the digital, political communication of ethnic organizations. It shows that these actors use social media strategically to achieve their goals -- although adoption of platforms has not been universal. However, when ethnic organizations take to social media the electoral context plays an important role. Moreover, ethnic organizations' digital communications carry wide-ranging implications in the digital space, as it can lead to more toxic language and negative comments. Although their offline impact remains unclear, the data collected in this dissertation provides a valuable starting point for further research.
Forschungszusammenhang (Projekte)
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(2023): Attack or Block? : Repertoires of Digital Censorship in Autocracies Journal of Information Technology & Politics. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. 2023, 20(1), S. 60-73. ISSN 1933-1681. eISSN 1933-169X. Verfügbar unter: doi: 10.1080/19331681.2022.2037118
Online censorship has become a common feature in autocracies. Previous work has investigated different online censorship tactics such as website blocking or cyberattacks independently. In reality, however, autocratic governments rely on a repertoire of censorship techniques to control online communication, which they are likely to use depending on the respective political situation on the ground. In this article, we study the interplay of different online censorship techniques empirically. Focusing on new Internet measurement techniques and large existing datasets, we study the relationship between website blocking and cyberattacks (Denial-of-Service). Our results provide evidence that autocrats select tactics from their censorship repertoire depending on the current level of contention. During quiet times, we find some evidence that governments rely on different censorship tactics in parallel. In weeks with protest, however, website blocking is negatively associated with Denial-of-Service attacks against opposition websites. This shows that when the stakes are high, autocrats become more selective in their use of censorship.
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(2023): Wo Differenzierung ist, wächst das Verbindende auch? : Polarisierung und Integration der Weltgesellschaft VILLA BRASLAVSKY, Paula-Irene, ed.. Polarisierte Welten : Verhandlungen des 41. Kongresses der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie 2022. Essen: DGS, 2023
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(2023): From alternative conceptions of honesty to alternative facts in communications by US politicians Nature Human Behaviour. Springer. 2023, 7(12), pp. 2140-2151. eISSN 2397-3374. Available under: doi: 10.1038/s41562-023-01691-w
The spread of online misinformation on social media is increasingly perceived as a problem for societal cohesion and democracy. The role of political leaders in this process has attracted less research attention, even though politicians who ‘speak their mind’ are perceived by segments of the public as authentic and honest even if their statements are unsupported by evidence. By analysing communications by members of the US Congress on Twitter between 2011 and 2022, we show that politicians’ conception of honesty has undergone a distinct shift, with authentic belief speaking that may be decoupled from evidence becoming more prominent and more differentiated from explicitly evidence-based fact speaking. We show that for Republicans—but not Democrats—an increase in belief speaking of 10% is associated with a decrease of 12.8 points of quality (NewsGuard scoring system) in the sources shared in a tweet. In contrast, an increase in fact-speaking language is associated with an increase in quality of sources for both parties. Our study is observational and cannot support causal inferences. However, our results are consistent with the hypothesis that the current dissemination of misinformation in political discourse is linked to an alternative understanding of truth and honesty that emphasizes invocation of subjective belief at the expense of reliance on evidence.
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(2023): Positional Deprivation and Support for Redistribution and Social Insurance in Europe Comparative Political Studies. Sage Publications. 2023, 56(5), pp. 655-693. ISSN 0010-4140. eISSN 1552-3829. Available under: doi: 10.1177/00104140221115168
We argue that support for redistribution increases when one experiences “positional deprivation,” situations when one’s own income increases slower or decreases faster compared to that of others. This specific combination of economic suffering over-time and relative to others has effects beyond well-studied measures of suffering that are static and/or absolute in nature, such as income level. We empirically explore this hypothesis by using “objective-material” measures of positional deprivation derived from the Luxembourg Income Studies and the European Social Survey, and by using “subjective” measures derived from an original survey in 13 European countries. We find that those whose income growth is outpaced by the average and/or richest members of their country are more likely to support redistribution. We also find that the objective and subjective measures of positional deprivation are significantly correlated, and that positional deprivation’s fostering of support for redistribution holds above-and-beyond static and/or absolute measures of economic experience.
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(2023): Identity breeds inequality : Evidence from a laboratory experiment on redistribution Journal of Public Economics. Elsevier. 2023, 222, 104866. ISSN 0047-2727. eISSN 1879-2316. Available under: doi: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2023.104866
Politics is increasingly driven by identity cleavages, which also affect the discussion about inequality and redistribution. Typically, redistribution is meant to reduce inequality, implying that redistribution neither makes the rich richer nor the former poor the new rich. However, if identity affects redistribution, these limits might no longer be binding, and redistribution could further increase existing inequalities (making the rich richer) or reverse the income ordering to favor the once-poor (which can even be inequality increasing if redistribution is strong). In a laboratory experiment, we investigate redistribution via a novel smooth one-dimensional distribution mechanism that also allows for an increase or reversal of inequality. Decision-makers receive information about the recipients' political orientation, nationality, or seat number during the experiment, and we vary the structure and source of income inequality (income is either earned, random, or unfair). We find most choices of the decision-makers involve redistribution, with only 8 % of choices sticking with the status quo. While most redistribution choices reduce inequality, a larger share—(18 %)—increase inequality by making the rich richer, 13 % of choices reduce overall inequality but make the poor the new rich, and 9 % increase inequality by making the poor very rich. Thus, 40 % of decisions are redistributions that are typically unobserved in common redistribution designs. Ingroup favoritism is a strong motive for redistribution in general, and it is the most important motive for redistribution to increase or reverse inequality. Indeed, 85 % of the inequality-increasing or reversing decisions favor the ingroup. Complementary eye-tracking data show that decision-makers’ attention to information about the recipients’ groups and to poor outliers are related to higher levels of redistribution.
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(2023): The youth mental health crisis : Quasi-experimental evidence on the role of school closures Science Advances. American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). 2023, 9(33), eadh4030. eISSN 2375-2548. Available under: doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adh4030
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the youth mental health crisis has reached unprecedented levels. To which extent school closures, one of the most heavily debated pandemic measures, have contributed to or even caused this crisis is largely unknown. We seek to narrow this blind spot, by combining quasi-experimental variation in school closure and reopening strategies across the German federal states at the onset of the pandemic with nationwide, population-based survey data on youth mental health and high-frequency data from the largest crisis helpline. We show that prolonged school closures led to a substantial deterioration in youth health-related quality of life, precipitating early signs of mental health problems. The effects were most severe among boys, younger adolescents, and families with limited living space. We further provide evidence that family problems are a major issue that adolescents were struggling with when denied access to school. Overall, school closures largely explain the deterioration of youth mental health over the first pandemic wave.
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