Working Papers

Local Housing Prices and Economic Anxiety

Alexandra Jabbour (Under review)
Abstract  Paper 

Do housing prices influence how individuals perceive their economic standing? Recent research linking housing prices to electoral outcomes suggests that they do. The theoretical expectation is that individuals update their economic perceptions based on housing costs and vote accordingly. However, it remains empirically untested whether housing prices trigger an economic reaction, and if so, whether this pertains to individual economic standing or sociotropic ones such as the national economy or the level of inequality. Testing this expectation is essential since other theoretical paths could explain the assumed link between housing prices and political reactions. This paper interrogates this key assumption by testing whether renters and owners react differently to housing market information. In two experiments conducted in the United States and Canada, treatments inform participants about local housing costs. Informing respondents about the cost of home ownership in their locality triggers economic anxiety among renters, but not all homeowners since only economically at-risk owners exhibit attitudes akin to renters. The results are important for our understanding of the political consequences of surging housing prices and its potential link with anti-establishment vote. The study shed light on the economic anxiety this may generate and identify the groups most affected.

Flood Insurance and Risk Socialization

Martin Alberti, Max Bradley, Alexandra Jabbour, Filip Kostelka (Working paper)
Abstract 

As climate hazards escalate, what explains public support for socializing the costs of environmental risks? This article draws on findings from the psychology of social solidarity and theorizes two explanations: blame attribution for risk exposure and heuristic judgments of deservingness. We study the case of flood insurance in six European countries, where the financial burden of environmental hazards has been on the rise in recent years. Our analysis combines a survey of over 8,800 voters with vignette and conjoint experiments on homeowner deservingness. Leveraging randomized blame cues, we estimate that attributing risk exposure to individual choice decreases support for risk socialization by 0.87 points. Conjoint analyses reveal that a contributory logic of reciprocity and effort drives these preferences more strongly than material need and shared identity. These findings extend conditional solidarity theories to climate policies, which transform diffuse threats into concrete distributive struggles.

The Neighbor Signal: Local News Markets and Economic Accountability

Alexandra Jabbour

Incumbency Advantage and Social Housing

Alexandra Jabbour, draft available upon request

Generative AI boosts productivity across the expertise ladder

Juan P. Aparicio et al. (Crowdsourced study)

The Effect of Increased Visibility on Radical Right Parties Electoral Success

w/ Caroline Le Pennec, and Ruth Dassonneville

Competition over Housing and Anti-immigration stances

w/ Jean-Francois Daoust

Does Social Spending Moderate Economic Voting? Revisiting the Economic Voting - Welfare State Nexus

w/ Ruth Dassonneville

Economic Perception in Motion: The Role of Commuting from Home to Work

Alexandra Jabbour, draft available on request