Research

Work in Progress

• “Should I Mail or Should I Go: Insights From a One-Time All-Postal Runoff Election” (with V. Lindlacher)
  [Latest Version]
  Abstract: We investigate how reducing information costs due to forced experimentation with postal voting affects voting behavior. Leveraging a natural experiment during the Bavarian 2020 Mayoral Elections, we employ an event study design. We find a transitory increase in total turnout and a persistent substitution from in-person to postal voting. Notably, municipalities with a higher turnout in the past show a larger effect. Investigating the distribution of the information costs shows an age gradient with the highest information costs for the oldest age group. The conservative governing party (CSU) gains persistently from higher postal turnout and other conservative parties’ in-person voters.

• “Administrative Failure, State Capacity, and Democratic Exclusion: Evidence from Berlin’s 2021 Election Breakdown”
  [Latest Version]
  Abstract: This paper studies the long-run participation consequences of a salient, non-strategic administrative breakdown in the delivery of elections as a recurring public service. I exploit Berlin’s 2021 elections, when hundreds of precincts experienced ballot shortages, unlawful polling-place closures, and multi-hour queues—exposure later validated by a Federal Constitutional Court annulment. Using precinct-level administrative data and a stacked event-study design spanning eight elections (2016–2025), I find persistent turnout losses in affected precincts. Total turnout declines by about 1.8 percentage points (2.4 percent), with effects concentrated in in-person voting: in-person turnout falls by roughly 2.1 percentage points in subsequent elections. Postal voting increases and offsets about half of this decline, implying substantial but incomplete substitution across voting modes. Heterogeneity analyses show larger effects in younger precincts. Survey evidence is consistent with two mechanisms: acute election-day frictions that induce last-minute abstention and a contemporaneous decline in perceived procedural fairness.

• “Environmental Shocks and Political Assimilation: Evidence from Movers and Flood Exposure in North Carolina”
  Abstract: This paper examines how major floods reshape partisan assimilation among internal migrants. I link the universe of North Carolina voter-registration records (2009-2024) to high-resolution flood maps and track approximately 170,000 one-time cross-county movers. A dual-clock stacked event study - aligned to both relocation and Hurricane Florence (2018) - shows that flood exposure differentially changes the dynamics of partisan assimilation. Republican movers who had already settled in flooded destinations display a sustained acceleration in alignment with local partisan majorities, whereas Democratic movers exhibit only a short-lived adjustment followed by partial reversion or shifts into Unaffiliated registration. Pre-move exposure has no comparable effect, indicating that post-move shocks act through the destination context rather than selection. The results suggest that environmental disasters alter the path - rather than the level - of political assimilation, operating through a combination of identity updating and social signaling mechanisms.

Policy Papers

• “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