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At least since the 2016 presidential elections in the United States and the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom, misinformation has gained increasing prominence in the public discourse. Only four years later, the COVID-19 pandemic emerged and was accompanied by an “Infodemic”, misleading individuals about the origin of the virus, its severity, and the intentions of governments coping with the virus. Misinformation was itself deemed a considerable threat to public health. Although COVID-19 misinformation was widely circulating at that time, and continues to do so, a substantial share of individuals did not believe this misleading information. That begs the question, why do people fall for misinformation?
This question is at the heart of this dissertation project, which explores the role of social media, trust, and values in individuals’ susceptibility to false information. Through comparative research, the project investigates how these variables affect the reception of misinformation and attempts to combine multiple levels of analysis and consider different forms of misinformation.
The core of this dissertation consists of three chapters, each of which addresses the research question from a different but complementary perspective. Chapter 2 provides the conceptual basis for the subsequent empirical chapters. The chapter investigates how individual, group, and system-level variables contribute to social media’s role as a vector for misinformation. In the third chapter, I employ an experimental research design to assess whether superficial characteristics of different social media platforms affect users’ credibility judgements regarding manufactured news. Contrary to existing literature, the experiment’s results suggest that social media platforms do not differ in their effects on perceived credibility of news. The fourth chapter builds on data from a multinational research project that explored the role of values during the COVID-19 pandemic and their impact on individuals’ propensity to believe in COVID-19-related conspiracy theories. Through a comparative design, using samples from Germany and Poland, the chapter finds considerable differences in the pattern of influential values and trust concepts on the adoption of conspiracy beliefs.
Although the findings of this dissertation project come with limitations, the research nevertheless highlights the importance of comparative research designs in the study of misinformation. The dissertation concludes by discussing avenues for further research.
In recent times, the “lost generation” is discussed widely in public debates. The “lost generation” is the young generation in Southern Europe: In Spain and in Greece, more than half of all young people are unemployed. In Croatia, Italy, Cyprus and Portugal, it is more than one third. With such difficulties in finding entry positions in the labour market, the young generation is faced with an insecure future. Without a job, it is difficult to be independent or to start a family: thus, both the personal and the economic independence suffer. Unemployment in the beginning of a career is likely to hamper career perspectives also in the middle and long run, and hereby leads to diffi-culties in saving for retirement. In this generation, unemployment hits everybody: university graduates who are perceived to be overqualified – or those who left school early in order to take a well-paid job in booming industries such as the construction sector in Spain. No matter the indi-vidual reason: a generation is deprived of their hopes. [...]
This thesis consists of three chapters investigating the interactions between the financial and real sector. It provides new evidence on (i) the correlation between portfolio investment integration and business cycle synchronization, (ii) financial regulation and how it is driven by the business cycle, and (iii) electoral incentives influencing financial regulators.
Chapter 1 analyses the correlation between cross-border portfolio investment integration and business cycle synchronization. Using data on 29 advanced economies’ cross-border financial asset holdings, it shows that portfolio investment integration correlates positively with business cycle synchronization when faced with idiosyncratic shocks. However, it correlates negatively when faced with common or global shocks.
Chapter 2, coauthored with Gonçalo Pina, employs a text-mining approach to build a new dataset on regulatory actions against the US financial advisor industry. Employing a Bartik shift-share instrument, it provides causal evidence that regulatory actions are driven by the business cycle.
Chapter 3, coauthored with Gonçalo Pina, discusses the political economy of regulatory actions against the US financial advisor industry. It shows that regulators consistently delay punishment against firms prior to gubernatorial elections.
Economic inequality, i.e. income and wealth inequality, varies across time and space. Preferences for and concerns about economic inequality in particular and political preferences in general are remarkably independent of such variation in economic inequality. Empirically, the mechanisms linking economic inequality and political preferences are difficult to study since economic inequality as a macro-level phenomenon can influence individual political preferences in many ways. A typical assumption in theoretically and empirically studying the effects of economic inequality on the formation of political preferences is that individuals have full information about economic inequality. This assumption, while analytically helpful, is conceptually and empirically contested. I study the formation of political preferences under incomplete, potentially biased, information about inequality by considering perceived economic inequality as linking mechanism between economic inequality and political preferences.
Chapter 2 studies the relevance of inequality perceptions for the formation of preferences for redistribution and finds that inequality perceptions are strong predictors for preferences for redistribution. I further find that inequality perceptions are independent of actual levels of income inequality but dependent on individual socio-economic and ideological positions. Chapter 3 builds upon this argument but looks at perceptions of tax inequality rather than income inequality and its effects on preferences for taxation. It shows that individuals perceive tax rates for different income groups differently depending on their own income position. Preferred tax rates for different income groups, however, are rather similar across individual income positions. Chapters 2 and 3 indicate that there is heterogeneity in perceived inequalities and that these perceptions are relevant to the formation of political preferences. While these chapters use individual level observational data to study potential mechanisms correlationally, I apply a quasi-experimental design to test whether perceived inequality—modelled as experience of inequality—causally influences political preferences in chapter 4: Studying populist voting in Germany, I find that experiencing regional inequality can affect populist voting.
This dissertation presents empirical evidence that considering perceived inequalities can help us to better understand why individual political preferences do not necessarily reflect levels and changes in economic inequality.
The Laval Quartet rulings of the CJEU have become an indispensable reference in every discussion on the social dimension of the European integration process over the past decade. Becoming a synonym for the subordination of labour rights and social goals to market freedoms, the rulings have raised different questions, the most pressing one being about the relationship between the economic and the social sphere of the EU as an emerging polity. The dissertation enquires into the question to what extent that relationship has been reconfigured in the aftermath of the Quartet rulings.
Starting with the rulings themselves through a law in context approach, the dissertation studied a segment of the aftermath in the period following the rulings (2008-2019). While the aftermath has played out at various levels of EU’s multi-level governance structure, this study focuses on the supranational macro-level, examining the development of the subsequent CJEU case law and the EU-level political responses.
The thesis makes the argument that due to the countermovement that the rulings have quickly triggered at EU and Member State level, a political struggle over the social in the EU has emerged, demonstrating the difficulty of conceiving of the EU as a common social space in conditions of diversity, a strong core-periphery division and governance structures dominated by market rationality.
Particularly the developments in the field of posting of workers, starting with the Quartet and ending with the Revised Posted Workers Directive, reveal three important insights for the integration process more broadly. First, the existing material inequality and differences in economic development among Member States in enlarged EU, of which the Quartet was an early symptom, have buttressed the European regulatory space as a space of conflict between the core and the peripheries. Second, resolving core-periphery conflicts has distributional consequences, which are particularly visible in the context of labour and social questions. Resolving such conflicts requires an EU common conception of (social) justice, which appears particularly difficult to conceive of in the core-periphery constellation. Third, progressive social solutions mostly remain foreclosed, as in both cases, at the Court as well as in the political realm, these are mostly contested within a framework dominated by market rationality.
The Court of Justice of the European Union is one of the most contested European Union institutions. It is a non-majoritarian body that wields power beyond the state and imposes its rule to citizens and directly legitimate national governments. Despite numerous bold rulings that went beyond the expectations of member states, added to the alleged global legitimacy crisis suffered by the EU, the CJEU was the most likely candidate to face total disempowerment. Yet the Court’s mandate has been extended as a result of the economic and financial crisis, and its involvement in the control of the new economic recovery fund in the context of the COVID 19 crisis led 2 member states to lift their veto to the most important recovery plan of the century. How is the Court seemingly not suffering a legitimacy crisis in the 21st century?
Answers to this paradox require a comprehensive exercise of theory building of the Court’s legitimacy. The latter is a concept traditionally employed to assess the justified right to rule of powerholders within nation-states and was used to describe the whole polity rather than some of its parts. Existing legitimacy concepts must be refined in order to characterize the transnational non-majoritarian body. The thesis thus provides the first comprehensive and multidisciplinary account of the legitimacy of the CJEU, drawing insights from law, political science and sociology. It recalibrates the use of concepts such as the “input-throughput-output” trichotomy to the specificities of the judiciary and combines theories of judicial review developed in legal scholarship with actor-based accounts found in empirical social sciences.
The thesis rejects the division between normative and sociological legitimacy and advocates for a recoupling of both sides in order to have a complete picture of the CJEU’s right to rule. The question of the Court’s audience is crucial. Standards of judicial legitimacy are forged according to the social characteristics of the Court’s attentive public. Since the CJEU is a non-majoritarian institution evolving on the transnational scene and exercises an expert activity discriminating legal specialists from other citizens, the Court’s attentive public is (as determined by the analysis of judicial external visits and the properties of the Court’s followers on Twitter) composed by the EU legal profession.
Normative standards of judicial legitimacy in the EU must be forged according to the expectations of the Court’s attentive public while respecting broader social dynamics found in all member states. In terms of the Court’s sources of legitimacy, the Court must respect its
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mandate enshrined in the treaties and judges must be outstanding legal professionals and reflect the population of the member states. It must respect due process and associate its attentive public to the interpretation and enforcement of EU law as much as possible. It must also deliver sound results that correspond to its status as the supreme court of the Union.
The thesis concludes by claiming that the CJEU is not suffering a legitimacy crisis in the 21st century. The legitimacy deficits that characterize its activities are progressively or remain minor, and do not outweigh the support that judges built with the legal profession over decades. The thesis nonetheless identified several institutional and behavioral shortcomings and includes a series of recommendations to address the mere legitimacy problems faced the Court today.
This dissertation examines employee work motivations, attitudes, and outcomes within the public sector drawing upon quantitative cross-country survey data. It challenges the dominant idea that public service motivation (PSM) is the only form of work motivation that matters for public servants by examining PSM against traditional intrinsic and extrinsic work motivation based on the framework of self-determination theory (SDT). It links these motivation types to different employee outcomes such as job satisfaction, ethics, and employee engagement while also taking into consideration stress in the workplace. It then shifts focus to examine interpersonal relationships at the organisational level through the concept of organizational social capital (OSC) and how management instruments support or impede OSC. This is relevant as it introduces conceptual and empirical differentiation between PSM and SDT, which is limited, or conflated, in PSM research. Additionally, understanding how management tools are linked to social capital provides a new angle for assessing management interventions and how they support or hinder the values, trust, and support within organisations. This research analyses civil service perceptions and attitudes across Europe and is presented in the form of four distinct papers. Overall findings show that PSM and SDT work motivation are different based on temporal focus, motivation needs, and measurement strategies and their individual utility differs depending on what type of attitude and outcome is measured. SDT appears to be more strongly related to job-related outcomes, while PSM is more strongly related to attitudes associated with job purpose. However, more nuanced findings suggest that different motivations may compensate for the failings of another and that they behave differently in different contexts and different stressors. Results also show that management tools focusing on interpersonal interactions are associated with positive social capital and can deter the impact of political interference. This dissertation contributes to the theoretical and empirical differentiation between PSM and SDT work motivation, providing evidence to support the fact that motivation types are context-specific and different motivations matter in evoking specific attitudes and behaviours. Consequently, future research should identify which motivations are most appropriate for which line of study and management actions should take this into consideration when designing institutional policies and interventions.
The severe political and economic repercussions of the "euro crisis" during the last decade have revealed the necessity for an improved understanding of both the determinants of sovereign debt crises and the political economy of structural reforms. This dissertation, which consists of three self-contained papers, contributes to these research areas.
In the first paper, we investigate the interaction of fiscal federalism and sovereign default risk. Numerous countries with chronic external debt problems are characterized by inefficient federal fiscal structures. However, the impact of a country's federal design on sovereign default risk has barely been studied in previous work. This paper aims to address this gap. We develop a stylized model of a federation in which regions borrow individually from international lenders while the central government decides whether to default on aggregate sovereign debt. We show that decentralized borrowing leads to higher debt levels, at higher bond yields, an increased default probability and lower welfare compared to a benchmark scenario of centralized borrowing. Moreover, differing regional default costs further increase aggregate welfare losses through distorted regional borrowing incentives. Case studies of Argentina and the euro area illustrate the channels described in the model.
The second paper analyzes how domestic distributional incentives influence sovereign default on debt held by foreign creditors. In a simple political economy model, we show that external default can serve as a redistributive policy similar to distortionary income taxation. The channel we derive builds on recent evidence which suggests that the output costs of default are mainly incurred by high-income households, whereas relatively poor ones benefit due to smaller public spending cuts. Although the potentially important role of income heterogeneity among domestic agents has attracted comparatively little attention in previous work, historical evidence is in line with our argument.
In the third paper (with Johannes Brumm), we argue that an important determinant of voters' support for economic reform is the strength of family ties. While the "crisis hypothesis" predicts that crises facilitate reform, we show in a political economy model that this relation can break down, and even reverse, when agents take into account the effect of reform on their family members. Applied to southern European countries with strong family ties, the model rationalizes why the extremely high (youth) unemployment following the Great Recession has not led to more substantial labor market reforms. In such countries austerity might block rather than foster additional structural reforms.
This cumulative dissertation investigates the economic consequences of divorce in Germany. It includes a general introduction (Chapter 1), three research papers (Chapters 2, 3 and 4) and one article that validates the data quality (Chapter 5). The analysis is based on register data from the statutory German pension fund. The data provide not only large sample sizes but also detailed earnings, employment and marital histories of the divorcees. On the basis of these data, the (causal) effects of divorce on employment, health and earnings are examined by relying on the propensity score framework. However, because propensity scores are sensible to the estimation strategy and the observed covariates, robustness checks with alternative estimation frameworks are also performed. Finally, to address the issue of hidden bias, estimated results are also challenged by sensitivity analyses.
The results may be summarised as follows: Among other strategies, women can cope with economic strain connected with divorce by increasing their labor supply and/or by earning higher incomes (compared to their married counterparts). While the income effect is negligible, the employment effect is very pronounced. I find particularly strong negative employment effects with respect to marginal employment and strong positive effects with respect to regular employment. Furthermore, the lower the labour market attachment before separation, the more pronounced the employment effect. Aside from labour market outcomes, health (measured in days of work disability) also declined considerably around the time of separation. However, I demonstrate that a naïve descriptive investigation would overestimate the effect of divorce on health because there is substantial selection into divorce. Thus, poor health is not only a cause of divorce but also a pathway to divorce. Lastly, the data set allowed me to link former couples and examine their employment and earning trajectories across divorce. Results indicate that women’s earnings increased in the years around divorce, whereas their ex-partner’s earnings declined. Nevertheless, huge gender differences persist.
Society increasingly calls on business, in particular multinational companies, to contribute to solving global challenges such as poverty, hunger, or the recent pandemic. Many companies and industries have responded positively to these expectations and use a broad set of efforts to work toward objectives such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. However, research has frequently pointed out that that there is limited evidence for multinational companies being effective to this end, as they have to overcome many internal and external hurdles in tackling such development challenges. Thus, uncertainty remains with regard to how multinational companies can become instrumental in addressing the persistent and global problems we associate with sustainable development.
This cumulative dissertation explores this question by studying how the multinational pharmaceutical industry has acted upon the challenge of insufficient access to medicines, vaccines, and other health products in low- and middle-income countries. By analyzing how two companies have tried to integrate access objectives into their business, the first empirical paper brings to surface two types of integration efforts that differently enable companies to make progress on the access challenge. It also highlights the strategizing needed for each type of integration to overcome internal and external challenges. The remaining two papers look at the pharmaceutical industry’s contributions to the Kenyan response to non-communicable diseases as a case of the growing scale and scope of involvement of multinational companies on the local level. One paper shows that local development actors perceive this as a challenging and risky phenomenon and lays out why and how they engage with companies as development agents regardless. By studying the Kenyan case, the final piece looks more closely at how governance structures may help to ensure that industry-led public health initiatives contribute to development objectives.
Together, these papers contribute to management research by showcasing different pathways through which companies can become instrumental in making progress on development challenges: an internal pathway of integrating social objectives into the business as well as an external pathway of steering corporate initiatives through local actors and governance structures. Finally, it also informs debates in global health research by adding often neglected firm- and country-level perspectives on the growing role of business in global health.