Christopher Roth
Biographic Data
| ID | 3627508 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Christopher Roth |
| GIVEN NAMES | Christopher |
| FAMILY NAME | Roth |
| SIGNATURE | ROTH C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cologne |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2806-7402 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 62 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1952 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Voice and Political Engagement: Evidence From a Field Experiment
We conduct a natural field experiment with a major European party to test whether giving party supporters more voice increases their engagement in the party’s electoral campaign. In the experiment, the party asked a random subset of supporters for their opinions on the importance of different policy areas. Giving supporters opportunities to voice their opinions increases their engagement in the campaign as measured using behavioral data from the …
Political Activists are Not Driven by Instrumental Motives: Evidence from Two Natural Field Experiments
Are political activists driven by instrumental motives such as making a career in politics or mobilizing voters? We implement two natural field experiments in which party activists are randomly informed that canvassing is i) effective at mobilizing voters, or ii) effective for enhancing activists’ political careers. We find no effect of the treatments on activists’ intended and actual canvassing behaviour. The null finding holds despite a success…
Explanations
The Demand for News: Accuracy Concerns Versus Belief Confirmation Motives
We examine the relative importance of accuracy concerns and belief confirmation motives in driving the demand for news. In experiments with US voters, we first vary beliefs about whether an outlet reports the news in a right-wing biased, left-wing biased or unbiased way. We then measure demand for a newsletter covering articles from this outlet. Right-wing voters strongly reduce their demand for left-wing biased news, but not for right-wing biase…
Designing Information Provision Experiments
Information provision experiments allow researchers to test economic theories and answer policy-relevant questions by varying the information set available to respondents. We survey the emerging literature using information provision experiments in economics and discuss applications in macroeconomics, finance, political economy, public economics, labor economics, and health economics. We also discuss design considerations and provide best-practic…
Beliefs about Racial Discrimination and Support for Pro-Black Policies
This paper provides representative evidence on beliefs about racial discrimination and examines whether information causally affects support for pro-black policies. Eliciting quantitative beliefs about the extent of hiring discrimination against blacks, we uncover large disagreement about the extent of racial discrimination with particularly pronounced partisan differences. An information treatment leads to a convergence in beliefs about racial d…
Political Activists as Free Riders: Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment
How does a citizen’s decision to participate in political activism depend on the participation of others? We conduct a nationwide natural field experiment in collaboration with a major European party during a recent national election. In a party survey, we randomly provide canvassers with true information about the canvassing intentions of their peers. When learning that more peers participate in canvassing than previously believed, canvassers si…
The Null Result Penalty
We examine how the evaluation of research studies in economics depends on whether a study yielded a null result. Studies with null results are perceived to be less publishable, of lower quality, less important and less precisely estimated than studies with large and statistically significant results, even when holding constant all other study features, including the sample size and the precision of the estimates. The null result penalty is of sim…
Group Size and Protest Mobilization across Movements and Countermovements
Many social movements face fierce resistance in the form of a countermovement. Therefore, when deciding to become politically active, a movement supporter has to consider both her own movement's activity and that of the opponent. This paper studies the decision of a movement supporter to attend a protest when faced with a counterprotest. We implement two field experiments among supporters of a right- and left-leaning movement ahead of two protest…
Coronavirus Perceptions and Economic Anxiety
We provide one of the first systematic assessments of the development and determinants of economic anxiety at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Using a global data set on internet searches and two representative surveys from the United States, we document a substantial increase in economic anxiety during and after the arrival of the coronavirus. We also document a large dispersion in beliefs about the pandemic risk factors of the coronavirus…
Does Party Competition Affect Political Activism
Does party competition affect political activism? This paper studies the decision of party supporters to join political campaigns. We present a framework that incorporates supporters’ instrumental and expressive motives and illustrates that party competition can either increase or decrease party activism. To distinguish between these competing predictions, we implemented a field experiment with a European party during a national election. In a se…
Misinformation During a Pandemic
Media outlets often present diverging, even conflicting, perspectives on reality -not only informing, but potentially misinforming audiences. We study the extent to which misinformation broadcast on mass media at the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic influenced health outcomes. We first document large differences in content between the two most popular cable news shows in the US, both on the same network, and in the adoption of preventativ…
Evaluating Covid-19 Public Health Messaging in Italy: Self-Reported Compliance and Growing Mental Health Concerns
How Do Expectations about the Macroeconomy Affect Personal Expectations and Behavior
Using a representative online panel from the United States, we examine how individuals' macroeconomic expectations causally affect their personal economic prospects and their behavior. To exogenously vary respondents' expectations, we provide them with different professional forecasts about the likelihood of a recession. Respondents update their macroeconomic outlook in response to the forecasts, extrapolate to expectations about their personal e…
Does Information Change Attitudes Toward Immigrants
Strategies aimed at reducing negative attitudes toward immigrants are at the core of integration policies. A large literature shows that misperceptions about the size and characteristics of immigrants are common. A few studies implemented interventions to correct innumeracy regarding the size of the immigrant population, but they did not detect any effects on attitudes. We study whether providing information not only about the size but also about…
Income Shocks and Suicides: Causal Evidence From Indonesia
We examine how income shocks affect the suicide rate in Indonesia. We use a difference-in-differences approach, exploiting the cash transfer's nationwide rollout, and corroborate the findings using a randomized experiment. Our estimates show that the cash transfers reduce the yearly suicide rate by 0.36 per 100,000 people, corresponding to an 18% decrease. Moreover, a different type of income shock, variability in agricultural productivity, also …
Measuring and Bounding Experimenter Demand
We propose a technique for assessing robustness to demand effects of findings from experiments and surveys. The core idea is that by deliberately inducing demand in a structured way we can bound its influence. We present a model in which participants respond to their beliefs about the researcher’s objectives. Bounds are obtained by manipulating those beliefs with “demand treatments.” We apply the method to 11 classic tasks, and estimate bounds av…
The Creepiest Clown
Recent Work on the Northwest Coast
Review Article| July 01 2004 Recent Work on the Northwest Coast Christopher Roth Christopher Roth Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Ethnohistory (2004) 51 (3): 637–643. https://doi.org/10.1215/00141801-51-3-637 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Christopher Roth; Recent Work on the Northwest Coast. Ethnohistory 1 July 2004; 51 (3): 637–643. doi: https://doi.or…
The Priestly Laver as a Symbol on Ancient Jewish Coins
Does Information Change Attitudes Toward Immigrants
Strategies aimed at reducing negative attitudes toward immigrants are at the core of integration policies. A large literature shows that misperceptions about the size and characteristics of immigrants are common. A few studies implemented interventions to correct innumeracy regarding the size of the immigrant population, but they did not detect any effects on attitudes. We study whether providing information not only about the size but also about…
Group Size and Protest Mobilization across Movements and Countermovements
Many social movements face fierce resistance in the form of a countermovement. Therefore, when deciding to become politically active, a movement supporter has to consider both her own movement's activity and that of the opponent. This paper studies the decision of a movement supporter to attend a protest when faced with a counterprotest. We implement two field experiments among supporters of a right- and left-leaning movement ahead of two protest…
Political Activists as Free Riders: Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment
How does a citizen’s decision to participate in political activism depend on the participation of others? We conduct a nationwide natural field experiment in collaboration with a major European party during a recent national election. In a party survey, we randomly provide canvassers with true information about the canvassing intentions of their peers. When learning that more peers participate in canvassing than previously believed, canvassers si…
Does Party Competition Affect Political Activism
Does party competition affect political activism? This paper studies the decision of party supporters to join political campaigns. We present a framework that incorporates supporters’ instrumental and expressive motives and illustrates that party competition can either increase or decrease party activism. To distinguish between these competing predictions, we implemented a field experiment with a European party during a national election. In a se…
The Null Result Penalty
We examine how the evaluation of research studies in economics depends on whether a study yielded a null result. Studies with null results are perceived to be less publishable, of lower quality, less important and less precisely estimated than studies with large and statistically significant results, even when holding constant all other study features, including the sample size and the precision of the estimates. The null result penalty is of sim…
The Demand for News: Accuracy Concerns Versus Belief Confirmation Motives
We examine the relative importance of accuracy concerns and belief confirmation motives in driving the demand for news. In experiments with US voters, we first vary beliefs about whether an outlet reports the news in a right-wing biased, left-wing biased or unbiased way. We then measure demand for a newsletter covering articles from this outlet. Right-wing voters strongly reduce their demand for left-wing biased news, but not for right-wing biase…
The Priestly Laver as a Symbol on Ancient Jewish Coins
Recent Work on the Northwest Coast
Review Article| July 01 2004 Recent Work on the Northwest Coast Christopher Roth Christopher Roth Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Ethnohistory (2004) 51 (3): 637–643. https://doi.org/10.1215/00141801-51-3-637 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Christopher Roth; Recent Work on the Northwest Coast. Ethnohistory 1 July 2004; 51 (3): 637–643. doi: https://doi.or…
The Creepiest Clown
Measuring and Bounding Experimenter Demand
We propose a technique for assessing robustness to demand effects of findings from experiments and surveys. The core idea is that by deliberately inducing demand in a structured way we can bound its influence. We present a model in which participants respond to their beliefs about the researcher’s objectives. Bounds are obtained by manipulating those beliefs with “demand treatments.” We apply the method to 11 classic tasks, and estimate bounds av…
Income Shocks and Suicides: Causal Evidence From Indonesia
We examine how income shocks affect the suicide rate in Indonesia. We use a difference-in-differences approach, exploiting the cash transfer's nationwide rollout, and corroborate the findings using a randomized experiment. Our estimates show that the cash transfers reduce the yearly suicide rate by 0.36 per 100,000 people, corresponding to an 18% decrease. Moreover, a different type of income shock, variability in agricultural productivity, also …
Misinformation During a Pandemic
Media outlets often present diverging, even conflicting, perspectives on reality -not only informing, but potentially misinforming audiences. We study the extent to which misinformation broadcast on mass media at the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic influenced health outcomes. We first document large differences in content between the two most popular cable news shows in the US, both on the same network, and in the adoption of preventativ…
Evaluating Covid-19 Public Health Messaging in Italy: Self-Reported Compliance and Growing Mental Health Concerns
How Do Expectations about the Macroeconomy Affect Personal Expectations and Behavior
Using a representative online panel from the United States, we examine how individuals' macroeconomic expectations causally affect their personal economic prospects and their behavior. To exogenously vary respondents' expectations, we provide them with different professional forecasts about the likelihood of a recession. Respondents update their macroeconomic outlook in response to the forecasts, extrapolate to expectations about their personal e…
Does Information Change Attitudes Toward Immigrants
Strategies aimed at reducing negative attitudes toward immigrants are at the core of integration policies. A large literature shows that misperceptions about the size and characteristics of immigrants are common. A few studies implemented interventions to correct innumeracy regarding the size of the immigrant population, but they did not detect any effects on attitudes. We study whether providing information not only about the size but also about…
Coronavirus Perceptions and Economic Anxiety
We provide one of the first systematic assessments of the development and determinants of economic anxiety at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Using a global data set on internet searches and two representative surveys from the United States, we document a substantial increase in economic anxiety during and after the arrival of the coronavirus. We also document a large dispersion in beliefs about the pandemic risk factors of the coronavirus…
Does Party Competition Affect Political Activism
Does party competition affect political activism? This paper studies the decision of party supporters to join political campaigns. We present a framework that incorporates supporters’ instrumental and expressive motives and illustrates that party competition can either increase or decrease party activism. To distinguish between these competing predictions, we implemented a field experiment with a European party during a national election. In a se…
Group Size and Protest Mobilization across Movements and Countermovements
Many social movements face fierce resistance in the form of a countermovement. Therefore, when deciding to become politically active, a movement supporter has to consider both her own movement's activity and that of the opponent. This paper studies the decision of a movement supporter to attend a protest when faced with a counterprotest. We implement two field experiments among supporters of a right- and left-leaning movement ahead of two protest…
Designing Information Provision Experiments
Information provision experiments allow researchers to test economic theories and answer policy-relevant questions by varying the information set available to respondents. We survey the emerging literature using information provision experiments in economics and discuss applications in macroeconomics, finance, political economy, public economics, labor economics, and health economics. We also discuss design considerations and provide best-practic…
Beliefs about Racial Discrimination and Support for Pro-Black Policies
This paper provides representative evidence on beliefs about racial discrimination and examines whether information causally affects support for pro-black policies. Eliciting quantitative beliefs about the extent of hiring discrimination against blacks, we uncover large disagreement about the extent of racial discrimination with particularly pronounced partisan differences. An information treatment leads to a convergence in beliefs about racial d…
Political Activists as Free Riders: Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment
How does a citizen’s decision to participate in political activism depend on the participation of others? We conduct a nationwide natural field experiment in collaboration with a major European party during a recent national election. In a party survey, we randomly provide canvassers with true information about the canvassing intentions of their peers. When learning that more peers participate in canvassing than previously believed, canvassers si…
The Null Result Penalty
We examine how the evaluation of research studies in economics depends on whether a study yielded a null result. Studies with null results are perceived to be less publishable, of lower quality, less important and less precisely estimated than studies with large and statistically significant results, even when holding constant all other study features, including the sample size and the precision of the estimates. The null result penalty is of sim…
Explanations
The Demand for News: Accuracy Concerns Versus Belief Confirmation Motives
We examine the relative importance of accuracy concerns and belief confirmation motives in driving the demand for news. In experiments with US voters, we first vary beliefs about whether an outlet reports the news in a right-wing biased, left-wing biased or unbiased way. We then measure demand for a newsletter covering articles from this outlet. Right-wing voters strongly reduce their demand for left-wing biased news, but not for right-wing biase…
Voice and Political Engagement: Evidence From a Field Experiment
We conduct a natural field experiment with a major European party to test whether giving party supporters more voice increases their engagement in the party’s electoral campaign. In the experiment, the party asked a random subset of supporters for their opinions on the importance of different policy areas. Giving supporters opportunities to voice their opinions increases their engagement in the campaign as measured using behavioral data from the …
Political Activists are Not Driven by Instrumental Motives: Evidence from Two Natural Field Experiments
Are political activists driven by instrumental motives such as making a career in politics or mobilizing voters? We implement two natural field experiments in which party activists are randomly informed that canvassing is i) effective at mobilizing voters, or ii) effective for enhancing activists’ political careers. We find no effect of the treatments on activists’ intended and actual canvassing behaviour. The null finding holds despite a success…
Psychology (13 works) · Economics (12 works) · Political science (10 works) · Social Psychology (8 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Media Influence and Politics (7 works) · Politics (6 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies (5 works)