Applied Micro Seminar - Michael Jetter (UWA)

Title: "Community Size and Electoral Preferences: Evidence from Post-WWII Baden-Wurttemberg" with Luciana C. Fioriniy, Christopher F. Parmeter, and Christopher Parsons

Abstract: We examine whether and how communities' electoral preferences depend on their size. Our setting is occupied post-WWII Baden-W¨urttemberg: While the French occupiers prohibited the entry of returning ethnic German expellees, the contiguous American zone on the other side of the border welcomed their arrival. Our analysis exploits the resulting discontinuity and the subsequent variation in community sizes and voting patterns in the 1949 national- and 1952 state-level elections across all 828 constituent municipalities. Our results highlight the prominent role of community size in determining votes for the SPD (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands), the party that advocated greatest government involvement in practically all aspects of daily life. Our estimates imply that a 20% increase in community size corresponds to the SPD attracting more than two percentage points in votes, an increase sufficient to overturn national election results.

Zoom details:
https://unimelb.zoom.us/j/86553137760?pwd=c0lnRWNuQ0pxUDQ2Ri9yb2htVjVvQT09
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