🚨 Ever wondered how fear and misinformation shape demand for government intervention? Our new @cesifo.org working paper provides some evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic in Russia. Check out the link and a short thread below! 🧵 #workingpaper #covid #covid19 #russia www.cesifo.org/en/publicati... - ThreadSky

zabolotskiy.bsky.social • 32 days ago

🚨 Ever wondered how fear and misinformation shape demand for government intervention? Our new @cesifo.org working paper provides some evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic in Russia. Check out the link and a short thread below! 🧵

#workingpaper #covid #covid19 #russia

https://www.cesifo.org/en/publications/2025/working-paper/fear-soft-propaganda-and-demand-government-intervention-quasi

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zabolotskiy.bsky.social•32 days ago

Fear plays a central role in classic political theories of government intervention going back to Hobbes, but the causal link between fear and demand for regulation is not straightforward. To identify this link, we exploit a natural experiment from a health TV show misreporting COVID-19 risks.

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zabolotskiy.bsky.social•32 days ago

During our survey on COVID and political attitudes, a popular health TV show in Russia aired an episode saying that the probability of dying from the virus is lower than from being struck by lightning (literally). Using shift-share, we show that this episode decreased fear of the infection.

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zabolotskiy.bsky.social•32 days ago

Instrumenting fear of getting infected with this shock, we find:
1. A positive effect of fear on demand for COVID-19 regulations and relief policies
2. Null effect on demand for regulations that were not related to the pandemic, like censorship or housing

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zabolotskiy.bsky.social•32 days ago

Disaggregating the effect, we find that it is highest for regulations people usually oppose, like wearing medical masks, business lockdowns, or stay-home orders. The effect is still there for the other pandemic regulations, but smaller and less significant.

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zabolotskiy.bsky.social•32 days ago

On the mechanism side, we show that fear of COVID-19 leads to skepticism about others' compliance with the pandemic regulations, which is in line with the neoclassical view that free-riding concerns drive demand for regulation. No effect on risk-aversion or trust in government, though.

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zabolotskiy.bsky.social•32 days ago

Thanks to Ekaterina Borisova, @nikitaz.bsky.social, @timfrye.bsky.social and Koen Schoors for being wonderful coauthors! 🧵

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