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Matthias Haslberger @mhaslberger.bsky.social · 5d

Happy German Reunification Day!

And thanks for the insightful thread, @jacobedenhofer.bsky.social!

Jacob Edenhofer @jacobedenhofer.bsky.social · 5d

German Reunification Day invites both gratitude and reflection.
Gratitude, because the peaceful revolution of 1989 was nothing short of a miracle — a bloodless dismantling of a repressive regime.
Reflection, because the wounds of the transition still mark the country —and because

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Reposted by Matthias Haslberger

Lewis Wade 🗃️ @wadehistory.bsky.social · 21d

I know senior scholars have too much on their plates already, but I hope they will give this blogpost (and the ones to follow) a read. The "Early Career state of mind" is very real, and the anonymous ECRs here capture so many of the challenges that it raises

will o’the wisp pooley @willpooley.bsky.social · 21d

“Cataclysmically bad”

This new series of ECR blog posts on the French History Network makes for grim reading, perhaps grimmer even than some in UK #FrenchHistory might have realised.

1st post, anon ECRs in French History on what it’s like right now out there:

frenchhistorysociety.co.uk/6691/

🗃️

ECR in 2025: Part One- What is it like? – SSFH

frenchhistorysociety.co.uk

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Matthias Haslberger @mhaslberger.bsky.social · 27d

That one can be an autoethnography then, gotta expand my methodological toolkit! 😅

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Tom VanHeuvelen @tvanheuvelen.bsky.social · May 27

At the blog I wrote about a new paper by @natewilmers.bsky.social , @zparolin.bsky.social , and @lukaslehner.bsky.social .

We're living in a novel era of inequality discordance. What's going on?!

asocial.substack.com/p/inequality...

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Matthias Haslberger @mhaslberger.bsky.social · 27d

I agree. But here is where AI can come in: we're developing a protocol for getting detailed occupation information (4-digit ISCO or 6-digit SOC) in online surveys. Combine that with a Big-Five battery or other psych measures, and some of these questions should become more tractable!

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Matthias Haslberger @mhaslberger.bsky.social · 27d

❗Our choice of treatment comes with limitations, such as a level of ambiguity regarding what people take away from the experience. But we think the paper offers some important insights that future work on AI and policy preferences can build on.

We're curious to hear what you think!

Matthias Haslberger @mhaslberger.bsky.social · 27d

🤝We interpret this as prospective winners exhibiting sociotropic preferences to support (but not just compensate!) losers, perhaps because of lingering uncertainty over longer-term consequences.

More results (heterogeneous effects, text analysis of open-ended question) are in the paper.

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Matthias Haslberger @mhaslberger.bsky.social · 27d

🤔So, people are self-interested, hence they should be less supportive of social policies they don't expect to benefit from themselves, right?

But that's not what we found! Working with AI increased support for social policies, especially for providing training opportunities.

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Matthias Haslberger @mhaslberger.bsky.social · 27d

💡Working with AI in our tasks did not make people feel like they were at greater risk of losing their jobs. Overall, they became more optimistic about the consequences of AI, for themselves and for society.

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Matthias Haslberger @mhaslberger.bsky.social · 27d

We expected that people would follow the standard risk-insurance model: that seeing AI in action increases subjective risk and people respond by demanding compensation. But instead...

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Matthias Haslberger @mhaslberger.bsky.social · 27d

🚨Very excited to see our new paper out in @jeppjournal.bsky.social!

We looked at how working with AI shapes people's risk perceptions and social policy preferences, with some surprising results ⬇️

JEPP Journal @jeppjournal.bsky.social · 27d

📊 @mhaslberger.bsky.social, Jane Gingrich, and Jasmine Bhatia explore how exposure to AI shapes social policy preferences in a UK survey experiment.

💡 Their key finding: when faced with AI, people want support, not just protection

🖇️ www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

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Matthias Haslberger @mhaslberger.bsky.social · 27d

Indeed! We're currently developing a study that will allow us to look at exactly that. In general, it is surprising that psychological traits have played such a small role in the politics of tech change literature so far, considering the central role of subjective risk.

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Matthias Haslberger @mhaslberger.bsky.social · 27d

Thanks for the shout-out, @sophieehill.bsky.social!

Our findings are a snapshot from the early days of AI adoption. You pick up on many of the open questions that we're trying to answer in follow-up work (how accurate are risk perceptions, role of people's psychological traits, etc), so stay tuned!

Sophie E. Hill @sophieehill.bsky.social · 27d

Really interesting paper.

One issue that complicates interpretation is that they their treatment is exposure to a human-centric AI assistant (ChatGPT) not an autonomous AI agent.

Creates a false sense of security rather than a more accurate subjective risk perception?

@mhaslberger.bsky.social ‬

JEPP Journal @jeppjournal.bsky.social · 27d

📊 @mhaslberger.bsky.social, Jane Gingrich, and Jasmine Bhatia explore how exposure to AI shapes social policy preferences in a UK survey experiment.

💡 Their key finding: when faced with AI, people want support, not just protection

🖇️ www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

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Reposted by Matthias Haslberger

Mads Andreas Elkjær @madselk.bsky.social · 29d

We've talked to the team at @worldpolitics.bsky.social about our recent paper on inheritance taxation. This is what came out of it. Have a look!

World Politics @worldpolitics.bsky.social · Sep 8

3 of 6 authors of the July @worldpolitics.bsky.social article, "Why is it so Hard to Counteract Wealth Inequality" spoke with The Storied Teller about #inheritance #taxation & #wealth #inequality. @madselk.bsky.social @benansell.bsky.social @mhaslberger.bsky.social wpj.princeton.edu/storied-tell...

Mind the Gap

In the July 2025 (Volume 77, Number 3) issue of World Politics, Mads Elkjær, assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen; Ben Ansell, professor in the De...

wpj.princeton.edu

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Reposted by Matthias Haslberger

World Politics @worldpolitics.bsky.social · Sep 8

3 of 6 authors of the July @worldpolitics.bsky.social article, "Why is it so Hard to Counteract Wealth Inequality" spoke with The Storied Teller about #inheritance #taxation & #wealth #inequality. @madselk.bsky.social @benansell.bsky.social @mhaslberger.bsky.social wpj.princeton.edu/storied-tell...

Mind the Gap

In the July 2025 (Volume 77, Number 3) issue of World Politics, Mads Elkjær, assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen; Ben Ansell, professor in the De...

wpj.princeton.edu

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Reposted by Matthias Haslberger

Anna Wilson @awilson1.bsky.social · Sep 2

🚨New article alert in @jvetjournal.bsky.social 🚨 Together with Scherwin Bajka
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

To exit or not to exit? Employers’ considerations in a collective skill formation system

Political economy scholars have long studied the (pre-)conditions conducive to the collective provision of private goods, such as in-firm training. Previous research has established the importance ...

www.tandfonline.com

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Matthias Haslberger @mhaslberger.bsky.social · Sep 1

This should be of interest not just for economists!

Ludger Woessmann @woessmann.bsky.social · Sep 1

"Skills and Earnings: A Multidimensional Perspective on Human Capital"

Final version now out in Vol. 17 of the Annual Review of Economics (Open Access):

www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

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Reposted by Matthias Haslberger

World Politics @worldpolitics.bsky.social · Aug 27

Figure 3 from "Why is it so Hard to Counteract Wealth Inequality" illustrates how people with low #wealth are much less likely to have an opinion about #inheritance #taxation than people with high wealth @madselk.bsky.social @benansell.bsky.social @aslicansunar.bsky.social @mhaslberger.bsky.social

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Matthias Haslberger @mhaslberger.bsky.social · Aug 27

We also believe that the literatures on the social investment state and wage inequality might benefit from incorporating skill formation systems more explicitly into their theories.

Lots more in the paper, check it out!

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Matthias Haslberger @mhaslberger.bsky.social · Aug 27

These are encouraging findings, but we argue that for dual VET to remain a model for tomorrow’s economy, it needs to be constantly adapted to changing skill requirements, straddling the twin demands of supplying labor market-relevant skills while maintaining social inclusion.

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Matthias Haslberger @mhaslberger.bsky.social · Aug 27

Crucially, in light of recent arguments that changing skill demands, uncertainty over skill needs, and weakening corporatism might undermine the benefits of dual VET, we test this hypothesis using three different knowledge economy indicators but find no consistent evidence for such a trend.

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Matthias Haslberger @mhaslberger.bsky.social · Aug 27

We find a strong and robust association of a high dual VET share with lower wage inequality, concentrated in the lower half of the distribution. The size is substantial: a 1 pp increase in the dual VET share is
associated with a decrease of the 50/10 ratio by about
1.3 to 1.6% of a SD.

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Matthias Haslberger @mhaslberger.bsky.social · Aug 27

We compiled a new dataset of dual VET shares in 37 countries (1996 - 2020, available for other researchers to use) and used lagged TWFE models to study the relationship with wage inequality (50/10, 90/10, and 90/50 wage ratios).

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Matthias Haslberger @mhaslberger.bsky.social · Aug 27

🚨New #OpenAccess paper🚨

The viability of dual VET has come under scrutiny in the knowledge economy, but in a new article with Patrick Emmenegger in the Journal of European Social Policy, we argue that it continues to offer benefits such as lower wage inequality.

tinyurl.com/3ayms6n2

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

tinyurl.com

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Mads Andreas Elkjær @madselk.bsky.social · Aug 26

It helps explain why governments, despite high and rising levels of wealth inequality, have not done more to alleviate it: Public opinion is disproportionately driven by informed and mobilized families of homeowners, who support low inheritance taxes 6/n

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