@article{MunzertRamirezRuizCalıetal., author = {Munzert, Simon and Ramirez-Ruiz, Sebastian and {\c{C}}al{\i}, Ba{\c{s}}ak and Stoetzer, Lukas F. and Gohdes, Anita R. and Lowe, Will}, title = {Prioritization preferences for COVID-19 vaccination are consistent across five countries}, series = {Humanities and Social Sciences Communications}, volume = {9}, journal = {Humanities and Social Sciences Communications}, number = {439}, doi = {10.1057/s41599-022-01392-1}, abstract = {Vaccination against COVID-19 is making progress globally, but vaccine doses remain a rare commodity in many parts of the world. New virus variants require vaccines to be updated, hampering the availability of effective vaccines. Policymakers have defined criteria to regulate who gets priority access to the vaccination, such as age, health complications, or those who hold system-relevant jobs. But how does the public think about vaccine allocation? To explore those preferences, we surveyed respondents in Brazil, Germany, Italy, Poland, and the United States from September to December of 2020 using ranking and forced-choice tasks. We find that public preferences are consistent with expert guidelines prioritizing health-care workers and people with medical preconditions. However, the public also considers those signing up early for vaccination and citizens of the country to be more deserving than later-comers and non-citizens. These results hold across measures, countries, and socio-demographic subgroups.}, language = {en} } @article{MunzertSelbGohdesetal., author = {Munzert, Simon and Selb, Peter and Gohdes, Anita R. and Stoetzer, Lukas F. and Lowe, Will}, title = {Tracking and Promoting Usage of a COVID-19 Contact Tracing App.}, series = {Nature Human Behavior}, journal = {Nature Human Behavior}, number = {5}, doi = {10.1038/s41562-020-01044-x}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/2397-3374}, pages = {247 -- 255}, abstract = {Digital contact tracing apps have been introduced globally as an instrument to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, privacy by design impedes both the evaluation of these tools and the deployment of evidence-based interventions to stimulate uptake. We combine an online panel survey with mobile tracking data to measure the actual usage of Germany's official contact tracing app and reveal higher uptake rates among respondents with an increased risk of severe illness, but lower rates among those with a heightened risk of exposure to COVID-19. Using a randomized intervention, we show that informative and motivational video messages have very limited effect on uptake. However, findings from a second intervention suggest that even small monetary incentives can strongly increase uptake and help make digital contact tracing a more effective tool.}, language = {en} } @article{StoetzerMunzertLoweetal., author = {Stoetzer, Lukas F. and Munzert, Simon and Lowe, Will and {\c{C}}al{\i}, Ba{\c{s}}ak and Gohdes, Anita R. and Helbling, Marc and Maxwell, Rahsaan and Traunm{\"u}ller, Richard}, title = {Affective partisan polarization and moral dilemmas during the COVID-19 pandemic}, series = {Political Science Research and Methods}, journal = {Political Science Research and Methods}, doi = {10.1017/psrm.2022.13}, pages = {1 -- 8}, abstract = {Recent scholarship on affective polarization documents partisan animosity in people's everyday lives. But does partisan dislike go so far as to deny fundamental rights? We study this question through a moral dilemma that gained notoriety during the COVID-19 pandemic: triage decisions on the allocation of intensive medical care. Using a conjoint experiment in five countries we analyze the influence of patients' partisanship next to commonly discussed factors determining access to intensive medical care. We find that while participants' choices are consistent with a utilitarian heuristic, revealed partisanship influences decisions across most countries. Supporters of left or right political camps are more likely to withhold support from partisan opponents. Our findings offer comparative evidence on affective polarization in non-political contexts.}, language = {en} } @article{KnoxLoweMummolo, author = {Knox, Dean and Lowe, Will and Mummolo, Jonathan}, title = {Administrative Records Mask Racially Biased Policing}, series = {American Political Science Review}, volume = {114}, journal = {American Political Science Review}, number = {3}, publisher = {Cambridge University Press (CUP)}, issn = {0003-0554}, doi = {10.1017/S0003055420000039}, pages = {619 -- 637}, abstract = {Researchers often lack the necessary data to credibly estimate racial discrimination in policing. In particular, police administrative records lack information on civilians police observe but do not investigate. In this article, we show that if police racially discriminate when choosing whom to investigate, analyses using administrative records to estimate racial discrimination in police behavior are statistically biased, and many quantities of interest are unidentified—even among investigated individuals—absent strong and untestable assumptions. Using principal stratification in a causal mediation framework, we derive the exact form of the statistical bias that results from traditional estimation. We develop a bias-correction procedure and nonparametric sharp bounds for race effects, replicate published findings, and show the traditional estimator can severely underestimate levels of racially biased policing or mask discrimination entirely. We conclude by outlining a general and feasible design for future studies that is robust to this inferential snare.}, language = {en} } @article{BaergDuellLowe, author = {Baerg, Nicole and Duell, Dominik and Lowe, Will}, title = {Central Bank Communication as Public Opinion?}, series = {Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy}, volume = {6}, journal = {Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy}, number = {2}, issn = {2689-4815}, doi = {10.1561/113.00000123}, pages = {211 -- 247}, abstract = {The legitimacy of central banks is on the decline in many countries yet support for central banks is thought to be essential for the successful conduct of monetary policy. Embedding survey vignette experiments into three panel survey waves of German citizens, we examine how support for the European Central Bank (ECB) and the central bank's communication style affects a respondent's inflation expectations. Our experiments show that while information effects exist, such effects are heterogeneous across different societal groups. We find that information effects are strongest among those who already support the European project and the ECB. Our findings have important implications for the public outreach strategies of central banks. Further, in the aggregate, our results also suggest that Euroskepticism likely has inflationary effects.}, language = {en} } @article{ProkschLoweWaeckerleetal., author = {Proksch, Sven-Oliver and Lowe, Will and W{\"a}ckerle, Jens and Soroka, Stuart}, title = {Multilingual Sentiment Analysis: A New Approach to Measuring Conflict in Legislative Speeches}, series = {Legislative Studies Quarterly}, volume = {44}, journal = {Legislative Studies Quarterly}, doi = {10.1111/lsq.12218}, pages = {97 -- 131}, abstract = {Comparative scholars of legislative politics continue to face the challenge of measuring a key theoretical concept: conflict at the level of legislative bills. We address this challenge with a multilingual sentiment-based approach and show that such a measure can effectively capture different types of parliamentary conflict. We also demonstrate that an automated translation of the dictionary yields valid results and therefore greatly facilitates comparative work on legislatures. Our applications show that a sentiment approach recovers government-opposition dynamics in various settings. The use of a simple, translatable sentiment dictionary opens up the possibility of studying legislative conflict in bill debates across languages and countries.}, language = {en} } @article{JuglPagelGarciaJimenezetal., author = {Jugl, Marlene and Pagel, William A. M. and Garcia Jimenez, Maria Camilla and Salendres, Jean Pierre and Lowe, Will and Malikova, Helena and Bryson, Joanna}, title = {Spamming the regulator: exploring a new lobbying strategy in EU competition procedures}, series = {Journal of Antitrust Enforcement}, volume = {12}, journal = {Journal of Antitrust Enforcement}, number = {1}, doi = {10.1093/jaenfo/jnad009}, abstract = {Regulation plays a central role in modern governance; yet, we have limited knowledge of how subjects of regulation—particularly, private actors—act in the face of potentially adverse regulatory decisions. Here, we document and examine a novel lobbying strategy in the context of competition regulation, a strategy that exploits the regulator's finite administrative capacities. Companies with merger cases under scrutiny by the European Commission's Directorate General for Competition appear to be employing a strategy of 'spamming the regulator,' through the strategic and cumulative submission of economic expert assessments. Procedural pressures may result in an undeservedly favourable assessment of the merger. Based on quantitative and qualitative analyses of an original dataset of all complex merger cases in the European Union 2005-2020, we present evidence of this new strategy and a possible learning process among private actors. We suggest remedies to ensure regulatory effectiveness in the face of this novel strategy.}, language = {en} } @article{BaergLowe, author = {Baerg, Nicole and Lowe, Will}, title = {A textual Taylor rule: estimating central bank preferences combining topic and scaling methods}, series = {Political Science Research and Methods}, volume = {8}, journal = {Political Science Research and Methods}, number = {1}, doi = {10.1017/psrm.2018.31}, pages = {106 -- 122}, abstract = {Scholars often use voting data to estimate central bankers' policy preferences but consensus voting is commonplace. To get around this, we combine topic-based text analysis and scaling methods to generate theoretically motivated comparative measures of central bank preferences on the US Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) leading up to the financial crisis in a way that does not depend on voting behavior. We apply these measures to a number of applications in the literature. For example, we find that FOMC members that are Federal Reserve Bank Presidents from districts experiencing higher unemployment are also more likely to emphasize unemployment in their speech. We also confirm that committee members on schedule to vote are more likely to express consensus opinion than their off schedule voting counterparts.}, language = {en} }