Publications
Van Steenvoort, Milan, Rusch, Hannes, Böhm, Robert, van Lange, Paul A.M. (2025). Support for refugees declines when helpers have unequal positions and abilities to help. [In press] Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. doi
Abstract
'Refugees' well-being hinges on receiving adequate support throughout their journey. In 2015, as many refugees migrated toward wealthier Northern and Western Europe, it seemed like communities' willingness to offer help depended not only on refugees' attributes or individual benevolence but also on communities' positions along the route and their economic status. However, survey methods struggle to isolate these factors' causal effects. We therefore use a framed economic experiment to manipulate specific situation features while keeping others constant. In our stylised economic game, two groups of four citizen players (n = 910) decide on aiding a passive refugee player (n = 114). One group (early-positioned) decides before the other (late-positioned). We introduce economic inequality by varying the groups' endowments (low vs. high). Our findings show that unequal endowments harm refugee support, and late-positioned citizens base their support on early-positioned citizens' actions. These results from our stylised setup suggest that support for refugees depends on macro-level situational factors beyond individual attitudes. From a policy standpoint, addressing economic disparities between communities involved in refugee support and eliminating sequential decision-making through appropriate institutions could enhance support for refugees.'Cassan, Guilhem, Van Steenvoort, Milan (2021). Political regime and COVID 19 death rate: Efficient, biasing or simply different autocracies? An econometric analysis. SSM-Population Health, 16, 100912. doi
Abstract
'The difference in COVID 19 death rates across political regimes has caught a lot of attention. The “efficient autocracy” view suggests that autocracies may be more efficient at putting in place policies that contain COVID 19 spread. On the other hand, the “biasing autocracy” view underlines that autocracies may be under reporting their COVID 19 data. We use fixed effect panel regression methods to discriminate between the two sides of the debate. Our results present a more nuanced picture: once pre-determined characteristics of countries are accounted for, COVID 19 death rates equalize across political regimes during the first months of the pandemic, but remain largely different a year into the pandemic. This emphasizes that early differences across political regimes were mainly due to omitted variable bias, whereas later differences are likely due to data manipulation by autocracies. A year into the pandemic, we estimate that this data manipulation may have hidden approximately 400,000 deaths worldwide.'Working Papers
Gender-biased fertility preferences may decrease fertility: evidence from a counterfactual analysis (with Guilhem Cassan)
Abstract
'Population studies have argued that the slower transition from high to low fertility observed in certain countries could partly be explained by the presence of gender-biased fertility preferences, which are generally thought to increase excess fertility (i.e., fertility above the desired family size). A common approach to analyzing the impact of gender-biased preferences on excess fertility is to compare observed excess fertility under biased preferences to (unobserved) excess fertility if gender biases were to be removed from preferences. However, previous work often makes strict assumptions about fertility levels if preferences had not been gender-biased. Here, we show that removing gender biases does not necessarily imply a decline in excess fertility. Excess fertility may even increase when switching from biased to unbiased preferences. This results from the equivocal nature of unbiased fertility preferences. Illustrating our theoretical framework using Indian data, we estimate that, depending on the definition of unbiased preferences, excess fertility would be 23% higher or 15% lower due to the presence of biased preferences. This paper thus provides a better understanding of excess fertility implications when societies transition from biased toward unbiased fertility preferences.'Where familiarity breeds less contempt: Political and economic effects of refugee reception show substantial local variation (with Tim Friehe and Hannes Rusch)