Trust in politicians can influence government turnover, economic and government performance as well as the demand side of policy-making -- voters' preferences over policies.
In this paper I study how a lack of trust in politicians influences the supply side. Using data on over 30.000 legislative documents, and 75.000 individual roll-call voting decisions as well as survey evidence for more than 1.500 candidates in German federal elections between 2009 and 2021, I show that low political trust leads politicians to be less concerned with the provision of many types of public goods - most importantly protecting the climate.
In order to establish causality of these results, I follow an instrumental variable approach. My instrument functions similar to a shift-share instrument and leverages variation in internal migration patterns and common state-level shocks to political trust. The results suggest that political trust is an important driver of politicians' policy choices.
Registration
To participate or to meet the speaker for a bilateral, lunch or dinner, please register via the form.
