Colloquium: Mona Foertsch (ifo Dresden) "Voting behavior and public good provision" and Julian Lamprecht (TU Dresden) "Essays on the Private Provision of Public Goods"

Abstract Mona Foertsch (ifo Dresden) "Voting behavior and public good provision":     I will present my thesis's three projects that address the relationship between voting behavior and public goods. Mainly, I will focus on one paper in which we ask whether social capital always promotes solidarity and democracy or whether social networks such as sports clubs are also vulnerable to populism. We exploit quasi-experimental variation in sports club membership in German cities. Sports clubs are booming in cities with successful soccer teams that pass the promotion threshold for a higher division but not where teams marginally missed on promotion. Difference-in-differences estimations show that far-right populists enjoy more support in cities with higher sports club membership rates in the wake of marginally promoted soccer teams. The populist momentum is, however, rather short-living, indicating that sports clubs intensify group polarization but are not a spot of permanent radicalization.

Abstract Julian Lamprecht (TU Dresden) "Essays on the private provision of public goods":​​​​​​​                                                                                                                                                 In the research colloquium, I will give an overview of the three papers of my dissertation. The general topic is the private provision of public goods. In the first paper,I show that in ultimatum-offer bargaining there is a strategic incentive to appoint a delegate whose political costs of public good provision are opaque. In my second paper, I analyze how changes in group size affect the provision of a public good in a mixed Kant-Nash equilibrium. Kantian individuals may be worse off if a new member is joining. The third paper deals with green finance. It is shown that the interaction with government policies renders private green finance activities inefficient.