We examine the deep roots of preferences for vaccination against COVID-19, moving beyond proximate factors which can only account for part of the observable heterogeneity in the willingness to get vaccinated. Our model on experience-based learning predicts that exposure to past disruptive crises...

This paper probes the persuasive power of authoritarian propaganda on social media and compares it to a similar campaign by the opposition. We carried out a field experiment during the 2018 presidential elections in Russia by collecting voting intentions and then randomly advertising a pro- and...

We employ proprietary data from a large bank to analyze how - during crisis - deposit insurance affects depositor behavior. Our focus is on Belgium where the government increased explicit deposit insurance coverage and implemented implicit deposit insurance arrangements. Estimating sorting below...

Understanding demand for state regulation is a foundational issue for social science. To account for this demand, existing theories rooted in market failure and government failure have focused on various forms of trust, but have paid little attention to fear. We test how fear and trust shape...

How do independent media affect regime support in an autocracy? We carry out two field experiments in Russia by promoting the country’s only independent online TV channel to a randomized sample of cities and individuals before the 2016 parliamentary elections. In both experiments, we find that...