Do Laws Shape Attitudes? Evidence From Same-Sex Relationship Recognition Policies in Europe (European Economic Review, Vol. 124, May 2020)
(joint with Cevat G. Aksoy, Christopher S. Carpenter, and Ralph De Haas)
[CEPR Working Paper]
Understanding whether laws shape or simply reflect citizens’ attitudes is important but empirically difficult. We provide new evidence on this question by studying the relation between legal same-sex relationship recognition policies (SSRRPs) and attitudes toward sexual minorities in Europe. Using data from the European Social Surveys covering 2002-2016 and exploiting variation in the timing of SSRRPs across countries, we show that legal relationship recognition is associated with statistically significant improvements in attitudes toward sexual minorities. These effects are widespread across demographic groups but are consistently larger for more conservative groups in countries with less gender equality. Our results suggest that laws can exert a powerful influence in shaping societal attitudes.
Partitioned Pricing and Consumer Welfare
In online commerce, obfuscation strategies by sellers are hypothesized to mislead consumers to their detriment and to the profit of sellers. One such obfuscation strategy is partitioned pricing in which the price is split into a base price and add-on fees.
While empirical evidence suggests that partitioned pricing impacts consumer decisions through salience effects, its consumer welfare consequences are largely unexplored.
Therefore, I provide a quantification of the welfare impact of the behavioral response to partitioned pricing. To do so, I derive a discrete choice model that jointly allows for differences in the reaction to marginal changes in add-on fees and the base price as well as a discontinuous effect of a zero fee. The model is based on a framework on limited attention and I estimate it using web scraped data of posted price transactions on eBay Germany.
My results suggest under-reaction to marginal changes in the shipping fee, consistent with previous results in the literature. However, I also document a discontinuous positive effect of free shipping on consumer demand, which is novel to the literature.
The combined impact of these effects on consumer welfare is less than six percent of consumer surplus. The welfare impact is attenuated because the maximum shipping fee on eBay is capped and the free shipping effect partly counteracts the under-reaction to shipping fees in expectation.
Airbnb and Rents: Evidence from Berlin
(joint with Tomaso Duso, Claus Michelsen, and Maximilian Schäfer)
We assess the causal impact of the short-term rental platform Airbnb on rents
using policy changes aimed at regulating short-term rentals in Berlin, Germany.
In the political debate about regulating Airbnb and similar platforms, proponents of regulation are often
concerned about the platform's potential impact on the housing market through the displacement of long-term rentals.
While several cities worldwide have already reacted to the rise of Airbnb with different policy interventions, causal evidence on the topic remains scarce.
We use the introduction of regulation of Airbnb as well as an update to the law as instruments for the number of Airbnb listings.
We show that both policy changes significantly reduced the number of entire homes listed on Airbnb in Berlin. We systematically select control variables
from a rich set of variables using a double-Lasso estimator. Our results suggest that one additional nearby entire home listed on Airbnb increases
net rents per square meter by five to nine cents on average.
Modeling Spatial Competition to Study the Impact of Airbnb on the Hotel Sector
(joint with Maximilian Schäfer)
The role of gender in fairness rating and performance. Evidence from mixed-
vs. same-gender competition
(joint with Felix Hagemeister and
Marica Valente)
