We've got ISSUES. Literally.
We scraped >100k special issues & over 1 million articles to bring you a PISS-poor paper. We quantify just how many excess papers are published by guest editors abusing special issues to boost their CVs. How bad is it & what can we do?
arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563
A 🧵 1/n
This smells distinctly like collider bias and/or selection bias and/or regression to the mean... You simply can't select teen prodigies, and world class athletes rom databases, and go run regressions without serious consideration of the selection process!
🆕 RFBerlin Discussion Paper!
@jopieboy.bsky.social examines how expected asylum seeker arrivals affect far-right voting, using evidence from a dispersal policy that reallocates refugees across locations.
🔗 www.rfberlin.com/wp-content/u...
Ook interessant voor NL sociaalwetenschappers: @saskiabonjour.bsky.social @leol.bsky.social @tomlouwerse.nl @leoniedejonge.bsky.social @catherinedevries.bsky.social @simonotjes.bsky.social @tamardewaal.bsky.social @tomwgvdmeer.bsky.social @jvanslageren.bsky.social
Wat voor invloed heeft de spreidingswet gehad op de stemmen voor uiterst-rechts? In mijn artikel laat ik zien dat gemeenten die een AZC moeten openen aanzienlijk meer op PVV/FVD/JA21 hebben gestemd:
@lamyae.bsky.social @ninazeelen.bsky.social
@guusvalk.bsky.social @chrisaalberts.bsky.social
@andreassteinmayr.net
@meulensimon.bsky.social
@sschneiderstraw.bsky.social
@joelmachado.eu @jeromevalette.bsky.social @matteogamalerio.bsky.social @ffasani.bsky.social @tomfratti.bsky.social @pbose.bsky.social @rghidoni.bsky.social @ollefolke.bsky.social @johannarickne.bsky.social
Read the paper here:
jopieadema.github.io/papers/Adema...
The Act also provided a unique opportunity to study the effect of expectations without arrival: the effect size I find (+1.2 pp FR voting for 1 pp of expected refugees) is larger than effect sizes of actual (refugee) inflows from the literature (see onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...)
This also shows that aligning with the FR on a previously supported policy may be a strategical mistake of the center-right VVD, relating to the debate on accommodation of centrist parties in political science.
@akoustov.bsky.social @tabouchadi.bsky.social @casmudde.bsky.social
This shows that a pretty sensible dispersal policy (fairly spreading the burden) in a heavily politicized environment can fuel the migration backlash: such reforms are better implemented before large shortages in hosting capacity.
Heterogeneity further indicate that the effect of expectations is muted in places with (past) intergroup contact. In affected placed, protests appeared and online search for information about AZCs increases. I am planning to work more on mechanisms using surveys.
Among already-hosters, the intensive margin does not matter much, suggesting that effectd are NOT driven by less FR voting among already hosters. Among not-yet hosters the intensive margin does matter: a 1 pp higher future migrant share increased FR voting by 1.2 percentage point.
Are these effects relative or absolute? Under the Act, there's a mechanism to periodically allocate of capacity. The first allocation was published in dec '24, allowing me to separate extensive (whether a municipality has to host) and intensive margin (how much a municipality starts to host).
I find that far-right voting increased with 0.6 percentage points in affected municipalities, no pretrends. Mostly PVV, but also FVD and JA21 benefited. This went at the expense of the conservative-liberal VVD whose minister proposed the law, but opposed it since the parliamentary vote.
I compare changes in FR voting ('21-'25) in municipalities who did not to those that did already host asylum seekers (voluntarily) in October '23, conditional on municipal characteristics. This is important as baseline FR voting was higher in non-hosting regions and FR voting increased strongly:
Because elections followed soon after the Act, affected municipalities hadn’t started hosting yet, so I can isolate expectation effects from actual hosting effects. Only 20% started hosting by '25. The Act’s fate looked shaky after the ’23 FR win but appeared secure by the ’25 elections.
The literature on group threat in soc. psych. poses that minority group size increases perceived threat and more hostile attitudes by the majority. Expectations about future inflows could matter; scope for perceived threat is large when the out-group is faceless and no contact is possible.
After capacity problems in asylum seeker centers (AZCs) in NL, the gvt. proposed the Dispersal Act, which obliged municipalities to host AZCs. When the Act passed parliament Oct '23, voters in the 65% of municipalities who weren't hosting yet expected to have to host asylum seekers soon.
🧵 Prior work studied the effect of (refugee) migration on far-right voting, but local inflows can only explain a sliver of the increase in FR voting around refugee waves. In my new WP, find that increased EXPECTATIONS about future migration causally increased FR voting in the Netherlands!
How to end the vicious circle?
Our CampAIgn Tracker got featured in this brilliant piece of investigative journalism by @groene.nl. They reveal the prompts behind an extremely disturbing AI-powered campaign by Dutch politicians that we find is one of the top producers & spreaders of AI-generated content in this election #tk2025.
📊Working Paper No. 7: “What Drives Refugees’ Return After Conflict?”
Survey of 2,500+ Ukrainian refugees across 30 European countries: territorial integrity and security guarantees are key to return.
Read: econ4ua.org/wp-content/u...
Submit research: lnkd.in/gf2nQ5WC
📣New Working Paper
“What Drives Refugees' Return After Conflict?”
✒️ @jopieboy.bsky.social @lchargaziia.bsky.social Yvonne Giesing, Sarah Necker & Panu Poutvaara
Insights into how conflict resolution, security, economics, and corruption influence return decisions.
🔗 www.ifo.de/en/cesifo/pu...
🆕 RFBerlin Discussion Paper: @jopieboy.bsky.social, @lchargaziia.bsky.social, Yvonne Giesing, Sarah Necker, and Panu Poutvaara examine the determinants of Ukrainian refugees' return intentions post-conflict. www.rfberlin.com/network-pape...
(11/10) PPL who’d be interested:
@plvezina.bsky.social @rlandersoe.bsky.social @mclem.org @ffasani.bsky.social @tomfratti.bsky.social @andreassteinmayr.net
(10/10) This is not our last study of Ukrainian refugees: we observationally study the effect of conflict on mobility, future plans and integration www.ifo.de/cesifo/publi... (update soon!) and experimentally macro-level drivers of return to Ukraine (paper soon!).
(9/10) Based on our estimates, we can calculate a migration elasticity w.r.t. social and child benefits of about 0.11 (and 0.67 w.r.t. wages). This is in line with most of the literature, except Agersnap et al. (2020, AERI). See my concern about that paper here: Joop Adema: bsky.app/profile/jopi...
(7/10) Heterogeneities: Men prefer to be further away; women strongly prefer networks. Those planning to return prefer to be closer to Ukraine, have a weaker preference for economic opportunities and a somewhat stronger preference for social assistance.
(6/10) We also find that distance from Ukraine matters very little; the presence of many Ukrainian refugees in nearby countries is thus not driven by geographic proximity, but rather by the presence of networks, linguistic similarity and the availability of job opportunities.
(5/10) Our main results indicate that work opportunities and wages are the prime determinants of destination choice; networks and knowing the language also play a large role. Social and child benefits are considerably less important.
