Project Seminar - Q3

Participation Prerequisites

none

Course Content

Course Content

Group Assignment – Academic Consulting Project 50%:

As an essential part of the course, you pursue an academic consulting project at the intersection of psychology and economics. You work in teams of 4-5 students. The project you work on is threefold.

1. In the first part (approx. 25% of the grade), the objective is to think about how personalities and early childhood experiences determine political attitudes.

2. In the second part (approx. 25% of the grade), each group studies one of the following topics: (institutional) trust and populism, identity and populism, culture and populism, and gender and populism. The basis for the two first steps should be primarily literature in psychology and economics, and secondarily political science.

3. Based on the results of the two first parts, you derive in the third part recommendations for centrist democratic parties (in Germany) to cope with the rise of the populist right (AfD) (approx. 50% of the grade). Elaborate using economic and psychological factors. Give answers to questions such as (this is not an exhaustive set of questions): what are reasons for the success of the AfD? How large a role do themes like culture and identity play in its popularity? What are common populist narratives? What are topics and communication styles to deploy to reduce the support for the AfD?

Write an essay of a maximum of 10 pages and present the results in in front of the class on February 23. Hand in the paper and the presentation material. The grade for the group assignment depends on the overall quality of the essay (50%) and on the individual input (50%), which we observe in the team supervision and poster presentation.

Individual Essay 25%:

We ask students to additionally write an individual essay of a maximum of five pages reflecting on their own political attitudes. Answer the following questions: Which facets of populism resonate the most/least for yourself? What has shaped your political attitudes? Use insights from a key political econ paper to explain your thoughts. Hand in the essay on February 23.

Class Participation 25%:

We will track your individual class participation.

Intended Learning Outcomes and Competencies

Students will have improved competencies in understanding personal and organizational perception and decision-making.
Students will have an improved ability to understand top-tier academic research in economics, in the subfield of cultural and political economics in particular.
Students will have sharpened their analytical skillset.
Students will have obtained further foundations in psycholanalysis.

Instruction Type

In-class lecture, self-study, online team supervision, presentation

Form of Examination

Literature

Here we list an initial set of papers that can serve as starting point

• Economics: do financial crises radicalize voters? (Doerr et al. JF 2022)
• Experiences: formative experience (exposure to surveillance) has decades-long effects, stifling freedom of expression (D’Acunto, Schnorpfeil, Weber WP 2022)
• Identity: birthright citizenship can make immigrants worse off when parents feel threatened in their identity (Dahl et al. RESTUD 2022)
• Social networks: dense networks of civic associations went hand-in-hand with a rapid rise of the Nazi Party (Satyanath, Voigtländer, Voth JPE 2017)
• Narratives: voters can adopt conspiracy narratives about corrupt elites (Szeidl, Szucs AER 2025)
• Overview: the political economy of populism (Guriev, Papaioannou JEL 2022)