The spread of propaganda, misinformation, and biased narratives from autocratic regimes, especially on social media, is a growing concern in many democracies. Can censorship be an effective tool to curb the spread of such slanted narratives? In this paper, we study the European Union's ban on...

After more than one decade of sustained economic growth, accompanied by falling poverty and inequality, Brazil has been hit by an economic recession starting in 2014. This paper investigates the consequences of this labor market shock for the victory of far-right Jair Bolsonaro in the 2018...

We examine whether local inconsistencies in the counting of votes influence voting behavior. We exploit the case of the second ballot of the 2016 presidential election in Austria. The ballot needed to be repeated because postal votes were counted carelessly in individual electoral districts...

After more than one decade of sustained economic growth, accompanied by falling poverty and inequality, Brazil has been hit by an economic recession starting in 2014. This paper investigates the consequences of this labor market shock for the victory of far-right Jair Bolsonaro in the 2018...

Luisa Dörr prepared this study while she was working at the ifo Center for Public Finance and Political Economy. The study was completed in February 2022 and accepted as doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. It consists of three distinct empirical essays...