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Jacob Edenhofer 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 Profile picture
@edenhofer_jacob
Feb 15, 2024 • 13 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X
These maps are interesting. Given the pre-existing differences between the East and West, however, we cannot simply "eyeball" the effects of the GDR regime, though some of the variation is likely causal.
Here are some of my favourite works that help us think carefully ... 1/11
about the GDR regime's effects.
1. I've pointed to this great paper so many times that I feel like a broken record, but this by @essobecker, @LukasMergele, and @Woessmann is essential reading 2/11
2. This by Kern and Hainmueller is an absolute classic and leverages the variation generated in large part by the topography of the valley of the unaware ("Tal der Ahnungslosen") around Dreseden.
3/11cambridge.org/core/journals/…
3. Bursztyn and Cantoni's paper use a similar identification strategy, but look at a different outcome, i.e. consumption, rather than attitudes.
4/11direct.mit.edu/rest/article-a…
4. Another great paper is this @JEEA_News piece by Lichter, Löffler, and @Sigginho. They use within-GDR differences in spying intensity to examine the effects on trust and, more broadly, social capital.
5/11academic.oup.com/jeea/article/1…
5. For non-German readers, let me note that imo Jens Gieseke's (@zzfpotsdam) history of the Stasi is unrivalled. English translation here
6/11amazon.co.uk/History-Stasi-…
Recently, a number of papers have come out that analyse the (i) process of privatisation (via the Treuhand) and (ii) effects of privatisation on economic and political outcomes.
6. This🧵and the related paper are absolute must-reads. 7/11
7. Then, there is this interesting working paper by @ufukakcigit and co-authors.
8/11nber.org/papers/w31645
8. This paper by @BachmannRudi et al. sheds light on the role of monopsony in creating productivity differences between East and West German firms.
9/11papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
9. On the political effects of privatisation, see the work by Hennicke, @anselmhager, @krause_we, and @LukasMergele
10/11osf.io/preprints/osf/…
10. @HansLueders has a new paper in @World_Pol, where he shows that the economic uncertainty associated with East Germany's democratisation has long-lasting effects, with East Germans responding more strongly to present economic uncertainty. 11/END
muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/…
Addendum: See this🧵of mine for some more general thoughts on the "workings" of autocracies:
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More from @edenhofer_jacob

Jacob Edenhofer 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 Profile picture
Nov 3
Fascinating paper by @grattonecon, @bartonelee2, and Hasin Yousaf!
The paper addresses a fundamental question: Why do some democracies chronically avoid ambitious, long-term reforms even when they have decent institutions?
They argue that what matters is not only institutional Image
quality (rules, transparency, electoral design), but also political culture: voters’ beliefs about whether politicians can be trusted and whether institutions really hold them accountable.
In their model, there are two types of politicians: ambitious
academic.oup.com/ej/advance-art…
(who promise reforms) and default (who play it safe).
- Ambitious politicians can be honest or dishonest; only honest ones try to deliver.
- Voters can’t observe effort directly; they see results with some probability (transparency).
- Voters have beliefs (their “political
Read 8 tweets
Jacob Edenhofer 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 Profile picture
Oct 30
Inspired by @CaioSeldon's selection of books, here is my summary of the conceptual chapter in Dahl's classic work on polyarchy and democratisation. The central question je seeks to answer is: “Given a regime in which opponents of the government cannot openly or legally organise Image
into political parties to oppose the government in free and fair elections, what conditions favour or impede a transformation into a regime in which they can?” (p. 1) He is concerned with explaining the development of a system of public contestation, with the government and the
opposition competing for political power in free and fair elections. The emergence of such a system is a central aspect, albeit not the only one, of democratisation.
Dahl argues that the key characteristic of democracy is the continuing responsiveness of the government to its
Read 23 tweets
Jacob Edenhofer 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 Profile picture
Oct 27
Inspired by this excellent Substack post, I want to share some thoughts on the limits of moderate accommodation and the logic of the second best. Specifically, here is what I think is the *strongest* argument for the anti-accommodation view looks like -- which doesn't necessarily Image
mean that I fully subscribe to it.
Moderate accommodation on immigration would, in principle, be feasible if Labour enjoyed credibility—or at least a lower valence disadvantage —on the issue. In such a case, voters could interpret a moderate policy
dysfunctionalprogramming.substack.com/p/on-the-immig…
adjustment as a sincere, competence-driven recalibration rather than an opportunistic manoeuvre. Yet in the British context, the credibility conditions for this equilibrium are absent. Decades of unmet promises have produced a persistent valence deficit: no government has even
Read 24 tweets
Jacob Edenhofer 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 Profile picture
Oct 7
Some thoughts on the strategic logic behind Kemi Badenoch’s announcement that she’d scrap the Climate Change Act (CCA).
It serves two functions:
1️⃣ It appeals to lukewarm pivotal voters in marginal seats sceptical of costly green measures.
2️⃣ It is designed to placate or, even, Image
boost the relative power of the climate sceptics in the Tory party, especially the Net Zero Scrutiny Group.
In a first-past-the-post system (FPTP), what matters electorally isn’t the national majority view, but where voters sit geographically. Winning
theguardian.com/environment/20…
requires pandering to pivotal voters in swing/marginal constituencies, not the country as a whole. Nationally, most Britons back climate action. But it’s a genuinely open question what specific policies pivotal voters in marginals support — if any. We do know that support for
Read 10 tweets
Jacob Edenhofer 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 Profile picture
Oct 4
Let me add this paper by Besley et al, which is forthcoming in the @QJEHarvard, which, I think, provides a nice micro-foundation for between-cohort variation in zero-sum attitudes. They define “growth experience” as the average GDP growth an individual has lived through since Image
birth, weighted by how recent those years are (recency gets more weight, based on @umalmend & @ProfStefanNagel's “memory decay” model). Their "identifying variation" comes from within-country differences in growth experiences from within-country diff.
cepr.org/publications/d…Image
in growth experiences between cohorts, controlling for country fixed effects (netting out time-invariant, country-specific confounders, e.g. macro institutions, culture), survey year fixed effects (year-specific confounders), and some conventional socio-demographic controls.
Read 6 tweets
Jacob Edenhofer 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 Profile picture
Oct 3
German Reunification Day invites both gratitude and reflection.
Gratitude, because the peaceful revolution of 1989 was nothing short of a miracle — a bloodless dismantling of a repressive regime.
Reflection, because the wounds of the transition still mark the country —and because
misleading narratives about the East persist when we don’t think carefully about what “persistence” actually means.
East–West differences in voting, trust, and economic outcomes are real. But they are too often construed as evidence of a either
a causal effect of the GDR regime or the idea that the regime eradicated what Almond & Verba once called a democratic political culture.
As for the first point: See the thread above; while some portion of the variation is likely causal, a naive comparison of "means" likely
Read 24 tweets

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