Приглашаем вас на Совместный семинар ЛИСОМО РЭШ и МЦИИР ВШЭ, объединённый с Семинаром НИУ ВШЭ по политической экономике.
Кристоф Кёниг (Бристольский университет) представит работу “The Political Effects of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic in Germany”.
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Краткое содержание:
Do public health crises affect countries' political landscapes? When the 1918 influenza pandemic broke out in Germany, it was on the verge of losing WWI. To maintain order, the government largely suppressed public information on the disease. Using a constituency-level panel of election results from 1893 to 1933, we estimate the political effect of pandemic severity in a Differences-in-Differences framework. Local pandemic severity is calculated from excess mortality in 1918 for all 362 constituencies of Interwar Germany. We provide evidence that 1918 excess mortality reflects influenza-related deaths rather than other diseases or WWI fatalities using detailed cause-of-death data for more than 100 German cities. Baseline results show that 1918 excess mortality is associated with a lasting shift of votes toward leftwing parties. We explore several mechanisms that may explain this finding.