Calendrier du 03 mai 2022
PSI-PSE (Petit Séminaire Informel de la Paris School of Economics) Seminar
Du 03/05/2022 de 17:00 à 18:00
R1-13, Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/94740575953
MEDELLIN Juan Camilo (PSE)
Firm size, informality and unemployment: The Colombian case.
Applied Economics Lunch Seminar
Du 03/05/2022 de 12:30 à 13:30
Salle R2.01 PSE
KERSTING Felix (Humboldt University Berlin)
Welfare Reform and Repression in an Autocracy: Bismarck and the Socialists
This paper studies the effect of a welfare reform, a repressive law and its interaction on the vote share for the opposition in an autocratic country in times of social unrest. I examine Bismarck’s policies of introducing social insurance and the anti-socialist law in late 19th century Germany. The socialist party, I find, increases its vote share in constituencies more affected by Bismarck’s policies. For identification, I exploit local and industry-specific variation in treatment intensity due to ex-ante existing local healthcare and detailed lists on forbidden socialist organizations. This variation allows me to use a dynamic difference-in-differences as well as a shift-share approach. As mechanisms, I highlight that the socialist party evaded the repression and dominated the narrative about the social reform. My results suggest that dominating the narrative is a crucial complementarity for the political success of social reforms.