BBS: Ms. Ria Ivandić

We invite you to the 27th and at the same time the 2nd online Brown Bag Seminar to be held on Thursday, July 2, 2020, at the Faculty of Economics & Business in Zagreb starting at 14:00 via Google Meet application. The cycles of Brown Bag Seminars will continue by the exposition of Ms. Ria Ivandić, London School of Economics, who will present the paper "From Taxes to Polling Stations: The Effect of Economic Policy on Turnout".​
 
A summary of the exposition:
Political pundits consider economic issues to be the number one motivating factor that gets Americans out to vote. Yet the causal identification of the effect of economic policy on individual-level turnout is a significant challenge in studying voting behavior that has not been addressed by previous literature. This paper uses an empirical strategy allowing to causally identify the effect of tax policy divergence across candidates on individual turnout and to disentangle how this effect varies for high and low-income voters. Using the 2012 U.S. presidential election, it finds empirical evidence that divergence in economic policy across candidates increases individual-level turnout. A one percentage point difference in the average tax rate in the proposed tax policies between Obama and Romney increases the likelihood of turnout by two percentage points. Moreover, high-income voters are 30 percent more likely to turnout than low-income voters when facing a difference in proposed tax policies. This effect is primarily driven by Republican voters and voters who follow news and political affairs.

About the author:
Ms. Ria Ivandić is a postdoctoral researcher, employed at the Center for Economic Performance (London School of Economics). She holds a Ph.D. from King's College London, a Master's degree from Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, and an undergraduate degree from EFZG. At the Department of Economics, LSE teaches econometrics and her research interests include political economy, crime economics, and applied microeconometrics. She has collaborated with several public institutions (UK Parliament, UK Home Office, National Crime Agency, etc.) and is currently engaged as a researcher on a scientific project entitled “Outreach to Domestic Abuse Victims in Times of Quarantine” (funded by United Kingdom Research and Innovation).

Description of the Brown Bag Seminar concept :
The Brown Bag Seminar (BBS) is an informal one-hour workshop with aim of presenting research in different stages of design (ideas, rounded theoretical framework, conducted empirical research, etc.), promoting discussion and creating a stimulating environment focused on the constructive discussion between exhibitors and the rest of participants of the seminar. The basic idea of the BBS is to create a platform where at least once a month, the FEB ZG employees will have the opportunity to present the ideas and articles they work on within their scientific-research work. We invite you to respond and help with your constructive comments to exhibitors and expose by yourself the topics you are currently working on, unpublished works or present the research ideas you are thinking about.
The idea is that presentations (in English or Croatian - depending on the presenter's preference) last for 30-40 minutes, followed by a discussion.