Publications
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.'Support for refugees declines when helping groups are asymmetric (with Hannes Rusch, Robert Böhm, and Paul A.M. van Lange)
Abstract
'Supporting refugees along their migration journeys involves multiple groups of citizens, which often differ in their ability to provide help. To study how such heterogeneity causally affects citizens’ willingness to help refugees, we utilize a framed economic game in which two groups of four citizen players (n = 910) decide about helping a passive refugee player (n = 114). One group of citizens (early-positioned) makes their decisions before the other group of citizens (late-positioned). We implement unequal abilities to help by systematically varying the endowment of the two groups (low vs. high). Our results suggest that unequal endowments between groups lead early-positioned groups to help less, irrespective of those groups’ own endowments. Similarly, late-positioned groups with low endowment help less. Our study contributes to the literature on the determinants of collective support for refugees and provides new insights on altruistic behavior in asymmetrical groups.'Where familiarity breeds less contempt: Political and economic effects of refugee reception show substantial local variation (with Tim Friehe and Hannes Rusch)