The quasi-exogenous division of the French regions Alsace and Lorraine after the Franco-Prussian War allows us to provide evidence about group identity formation within historically homogeneous regions. We use several measures of stated and revealed preferences at the municipal-level in a...

A major theory from social psychology claims that external threats can strengthen group identities and cooperation. This paper exploits the Russian invasion in Ukraine 2014 as a sudden increase in the perceived military threat for eastern European Union member states, in particular for the...

Die Migration nach Europa hält weiter an. Seit der Flüchtlingskrise 2015 hat sich der Druck auf die EU und ihre am stärksten betroffenen Mitgliedstaaten erhöht, Maßnahmen zur Eindämmung der Einwanderung aus Entwicklungsländern zu ergreifen. Sollten die bisherigen Ansätze bei der...

Preferences about the vertical distribution of power in federal systems are not well understood. I argue that negative historical experiences with higher-level governments can plausibly raise demands for exit strategies and a devolution of power. But integration, for instance delegating power...

We provide evidence on the mechanisms linking resource-related income shocks to conflict, focusing specifically on illegal crops. We hypothesize that the degree of group competition over resources and the extent of law enforcement explain whether opportunity cost or contest effects dominate....

Immigration is one of the most divisive political issues in many countries today. Competing narratives, circulated via the media, are crucial in shaping how immigrants' role in society is perceived. We propose a new method combining advanced natural language processing tools with dictionaries to...

We provide novel evidence of how an innovative market-based solution using remote-sensing technology can mitigate conflict. Droughts are a major driver of conflict in Africa, particularly between nomadic pastoralists and sedentary farmers, and climate change is predicted to intensify this...

Understanding behavioral aspects of collective decision-making is an important challenge for eco-nomics, and narratives are a crucial group-based mechanism that influences human decision-making. This paper introduces the Character-Role Narrative Framework as a tool to systematically analyze...

We measure immigrant narratives in German newspapers and assign each sentence to one of seven themes. Using natural language processing (NLP) tools and customized dictionaries, we analyze over 100,000 articles. 45 percent of narratives are on Foreign Religion, 23 percent on Cultural Integration,...

Credit rating agencies are frequently criticized for producing sovereign ratings that do not accurately reflect the economic and political fundamentals of rated countries. This article discusses how the home country of rating agencies could affect rating decisions as a result of political...