Research

“Should I Mail or Should I Go: Insights From a One-Time All-Postal Runoff Election” (with V. Lindlacher)
Abstract: We examine how eligible voters in Bavaria, Germany, change their voting behavior after some of them experience mail-in voting for their first time. Exploiting a natural experiment during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the runoff election in the 2020 mayoral election was an all-postal election, we employ an event study using municipality-level data. The findings indicate a robust but temporal positive effect on total turnout in the first subsequent election, with an increase of 0.5 percentage points, on average, as well as on mail-in turnout, with an increase of 1.0 percentage points. In-person voting is persistently shifted by 0.5 percentage points, on average, towards mail-in voting. The effect is stronger for small municipalities and for municipalities with a low voter turnout in the last federal election. These results contribute to the understanding of how citizens’ behavior changes when more information about mail-in voting reduces cognitive costs and habit formation in terms of the voting mode.
“Labor Market Impact of Environmental Policy: Evidence from the EU” [Conceptualization]
“Voting Costs and Turnout: Evidence from Germany” [Conceptualization]

“Faktoren von Familiengründung, Kinderlosigkeit und Kinderreichtum in Ostdeutschland” (with K. Heisig and T. Scheurer), 2023, ifo Dresden Studie 89
“Was Ersteltern von Personen ohne Kinder in Ostdeutschland unterscheidet” (with K. Heisig), 2023, ifo Dresden berichtet 31
“Faktoren der Kinderlosigkeit in Ostdeutschland” (with K. Heisig and T. Scheurer), 2022, ifo Dresden berichtet 29