This paper analyses the effect of information disseminated by the Internet on voting behavior. We address endogeneity in Internet availability by exploiting regional and technological peculiarities of the preexisting voice telephony network that hinder the roll-out of fixed-line broadband infrastructure for high-speed Internet. We find small negative effects of Internet availability on voter turnout, and no evidence that the Internet systematically benefits single parties. Robustness tests including placebo estimations from the pre-Internet era confirm our results. We relate differences in the Internet effect between national and local elections to a crowding out of national but not local newspapers.JEL Codes: D72, C50, L86

We identify the causal effect of trade-integration with China and Eastern Europe on voting in Germany from 1987 to 2009. Looking at the entire political spectrum, we find that only extreme-right parties respond significantly to trade integration. Their vote share increases with import competition and decreases with export access opportunities. We unpack mechanisms using reduced form evidence and a causal mediation analysis. Two-thirds of the total effect of trade integration on voting appears to be driven by observable labor market adjustments, primarily changes in manufacturing employment. These results are mirrored in an individual-level analysis in the German Socioeconomic Panel.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractIt is often the case that an endogenous treatment variable causally affects an intermediate variable that in turn causally affects a final outcome. Using an Instrumental Variable (IV) identifies the causal effect of the endogenous treatment on both the intermediate and the final outcome variable, but not the extent to which the intermediate variable affects the final outcome. We present a new testable framework in which a single IV suffices to also estimate the causal effect of the intermediate variable on the final outcome. We use this framework to investigate to what extent German voters responded to the labor market turmoil caused by increasing trade with low-wage manufacturing countries. We first establish that import competition increased voters' support for only extreme (right) parties. We then decompose this populist 'total effect' into a 'mediated effect' running through labor market adjustments and a 'direct effect' of trade exposure on voting behavior. We find the total consists of a large populist effect driven by labor markets and a relatively smaller but moderating direct effect. Our approach provides a template that may be useful in a broad range of empirical applications studying causal mechanisms in observational data.

This paper analyses the effect of information disseminated by the Internet on voting behavior. We address endogeneity in Internet availability by exploiting regional and technological peculiarities of the preexisting voice telephony network that hinder the roll-out of fixed-line broadband infrastructure for high-speed Internet. We find small negative effects of Internet availability on voter turnout, and no evidence that the Internet systematically benefits single parties. Robustness tests including placebo estimations from the pre-Internet era confirm our results. We relate differences in the Internet effect between national and local elections to a crowding out of national but not local newspapers.

We investigate economic causes of the rising support of populist parties in industrialized countries. Looking at Germany, we find that exposure to imports from low wage countries increases the support for nationalist parties between 1987–2009, while increasing exports have the opposite effect. The net effect translates into increasing support of the right-populist AfD after its emergence in 2013. Individual data from the German Socioeconomic Panel reveal that low-skilled manufacturing workers’ political preferences are most responsive to trade exposure. Using a novel approach to causal mediation analysis, we identify trade-induced labor market adjustments as economic mechanism causing the voting response to international trade.