Davide Cantoni

Research

Working Papers

Davide Cantoni, Cathrin Mohr, Matthias Weigand
"Identity and Institutional Change: Evidence from First Names in Germany, 1700–1850"
Draft (August 2025): [WP]

Abstract: How does culture respond to institutional change? We study the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire (1789–1815), when half of Central Europe changed rulers. Using 44 million birth records from hundreds of cities between 1700 and 1850, we measure cultural traits in real time. Cities that experienced ruler change saw greater naming turnover, dispersion, and novelty. We construct control groups using diplomatic records to isolate these effects, which emerged immediately and persisted. The collapse of hegemonic authority weakened state-aligned identities while strengthening religiosity and nationalism. These shifts undermined subsequent state building, highlighting challenges of ideological integration after regime change.
Mathias Bühler, Davide Cantoni, Matthias Weigand
"City Directories as a Source of Historical Microdata: Progress Report"
Current draft (March 2024): [pdf]

Abstract: This note represents a progress report on the digitization of city directories in Munich, 1845–1914. With information on names, occupations, and residential locations, directories provide a valuable source of microdata especially in a context where individual-level census records did not survive. We construct linked, complete-count data of over one million household- years based on 15 directories. Additionally, we precisely geolocate all historical addresses, drawing on a wide range of supplementary data. We discuss the construction of this dataset and present a novel approach to classify occupational standing based on the noun components of occupation titles. Finally, we show a series of descriptive findings on city growth, spatial inequality and social mobility that shed light on city development in one of the largest and fastest-growing, industrializing urban centers of Central Europe during the 19th and early 20th centuries. We view our approach as a pilot study towards the use of city directories as a source of rich individual-level microdata to study the economic and social history of cities.
Davide Cantoni, Felix Hagemeister, Mark Westcott
"Persistence and Activation of Right-Wing Political Ideology"
Current draft (May 2020): [pdf]

Previous draft (September 2017): [Munich WP]
Media Coverage: [ZEIT online] [Times] [Bloomberg] [Ara] [Economist] [Dagens Nyheter]
Abstract: We argue that persistence of right-wing ideology can explain the recent rise of populism. Shifts in the supply of party platforms interact with an existing demand, giving rise to hitherto invisible patterns of persistence. The emergence of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) offered German voters a populist right-wing option with little social stigma attached. We show that municipalities that expressed strong support for the Nazi party in 1933 are more likely to vote for the AfD. These dynamics are not generated by a concurrent rightward shift in political attitudes, nor by other factors or shocks commonly associated with right-wing populism.

Publications

Davide Cantoni, Noam Yuchtman
"Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson: The Identification of Historically Contingent Causal Effects"
Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 127(3): 495–510 (July 2025)
Original article (open access): [SJE website] [PDF]
Final draft (April 2025): [pdf]

Abstract: In 2024, Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson (AJR) received the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. These three scholars were recognized “for studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity.” This paper reviews the contributions of these three scholars to our understanding of the institutional causes of historical and contemporary economic development. We place their work in the context of the intellectual history of the fields of economics and economic history: these authors pioneered the quantitative analysis of historical natural experiments to identify the causal effects of political institutions. We then discuss a less widely discussed contribution of their work: the identification of historically contingent causal effects. Historical contingency, we argue, is at the heart of AJR’s conceptual and empirical insights. These insights clarify transformative processes in historical development, including: (i) European colonialism; (ii) the Atlantic Trade; and, (iii) the French Revolution. More generally, they have implications for how we think about the path-dependence of political institutions and economic development: history has a long shadow, but that shadow shifts over time.
Davide Cantoni, Cathrin Mohr, Matthias Weigand
"The Rise of Fiscal Capacity: Administration and State Consolidation in the Holy Roman Empire"
Econometrica, 92(5): 1439–1472 (September 2024)
Original article (open access): [ES website] [PDF]
Final draft (February 2024): [pdf]

Abstract: This paper studies the role of fiscal capacity in European state consolidation. Our analysis is organized around novel data on the territories and cities of the Holy Roman Empire in the early modern period. Territories implementing an early fiscal reform were more likely to survive, increased in size, and achieved a more compact extent. We provide evidence for the causal interpretation of these results and show key mechanisms: revenues, military investments, and marriage success. The imposition of Imperial taxes, quasi-random in timing and size, increased the benefits of an efficient tax administration on the side of rulers, driving the implementation of fiscal centralization. Within territories, Chambers became the dominant administrative institution, tilting the consolidating states toward absolutism.
Davide Cantoni, Andrew Kao, David Y. Yang, Noam Yuchtman
"Protests"
Annual Review of Economics, 16: 519–543 (2024)
Original article (open access): [AR website] [PDF]
Final draft (February 2024): [pdf]

Abstract: Citizens have long taken to the streets to demand change, expressing po- litical views that may otherwise be suppressed. Protests have produced change at local, national, and international scales, including spectacular moments of political and social transformation. We document five new empirical patterns describing 1.2 million protest events across 218 coun- tries between 1980 and 2020. First, autocracies and weak democracies experienced a trend break in protests during the Arab Spring. Second, protest movements also rose in importance following the Arab Spring. Third, protest movements geographically diffuse over time, spiking to their peak, before falling off. Fourth, a country’s year-to-year economic performance is not strongly correlated with protests; individual values are predictive of protest participation. Fifth, the US, China, and Russia are the most over-represented countries by their share of academic stud- ies. We discuss each pattern’s connections to the existing literature and anticipate paths for future work.
Leonardo Bursztyn, Davide Cantoni, Patricia Funk, Felix Schönenberger, Noam Yuchtman
"Identifying the Effect of Election Closeness on Voter Turnout: Evidence from Swiss Referenda"
Journal of the European Economic Association, 22(2): 876–914 (April 2024)
Original article: [JEEA website]
Final draft (April 2023): [pdf]

Abstract: We provide evidence of a causal effect of anticipated election closeness on voter turnout, exploiting the precise day-level timing of the release of Swiss national poll results for high-stakes federal referenda, and a novel dataset on daily mail-in voting for the canton of Geneva. Using an event study design, we find that the release of a closer poll causes voter turnout to sharply rise immediately after poll release, with no differential pre-release turnout levels or trends. We provide evidence that polls affect turnout by providing information shaping beliefs about closeness. The effects of close polls are largest where newspapers report on them most; and, the introduction of polls had significantly larger effects in politically unrepresentative municipalities, where locally available signals of closeness are less correlated with national closeness. We then provide evidence that the effect of close polls is heterogeneous, with an asymmetric effect leading to a higher vote share for the underdog. The effect sizes we estimate are large enough to flip high-stakes election outcomes under plausible counterfactual scenarios.

This paper supersedes a previous working paper titled, "Polls, the Press, and Political Participation: The Effects of Anticipated Election Closeness on Voter Turnout."
Davide Cantoni, Louis-Jonas Heizlsperger, David Y. Yang, Noam Yuchtman, Y. Jane Zhang
"The Fundamental Determinants of Protest Participation: Evidence from Hong Kong’s Antiauthoritarian Movement"
Journal of Public Economics, 211: 104667 (July 2022)
Original article (open access): [JPubE website]
Final draft (April 2022): [pdf]

Abstract: Which fundamental traits are associated with individuals’ participation in antiauthoritarian protests? We conduct a series of surveys eliciting university students’ participation in Hong Kong’s antiauthori- tarian movement, covering a period that included protests ranging from tens of thousands to over one million participants. We construct a comprehensive profile of fundamental economic preferences: risk and time preferences plausibly affecting an individual’s costs of protest participation; social preferences affecting the benefits. We also elicit other fundamental traits: personality, cognitive abilities, and socioeconomic background. We document several facts about protest participants: (i) fundamental economic preferences, particularly risk tolerance and pro-social preferences, are the strongest predictors of protest participation; (ii) the strongest predictors are the same for modest and massive protests, with larger ef- fects for massive protests; (iii) participation in massive protests is not driven by marginal types, but rather by inframarginal types; (iv) both the distribution of fundamental preferences and their relationship with protest participation are very similar between university students and the broader population; and, (v) willingness to respond honestly to sensitive survey questions is high and stable over the entire sample period. Our findings suggest that economic preferences be considered alongside class background and personality as deeply determined traits driving protest participation and can inform the development of dynamic models of protest movements.

This paper supersedes an earlier draft (November 2016) titled "The Fundamental Determinants of Anti-Authoritarianism": [pdf]
Leonardo Bursztyn, Davide Cantoni, David Y. Yang, Noam Yuchtman, Y. Jane Zhang
"Persistent Political Engagement: Social Interactions and the Dynamics of Protest Movements"
American Economic Review: Insights, 3(2): 233–250 (June 2021)
Original article: [AEA website] [PDF] [Copyright notice] [Online Appendix]
Final draft (March 2020): [pdf]

Abstract: We study the causes of sustained participation in political movements. To identify the persistent effect of protest participation, we randomly, indirectly incentivize Hong Kong university students into participation in an antiauthoritarian protest. To identify the role of social networks, we randomize this treatment's intensity across major-cohort cells. We find that incentives to attend one protest within a political movement increase subsequent protest attendance, but only when a sufficient fraction of an individual's social network is also incentivized to attend the initial protest. One-time mobilization shocks have dynamic consequences, with mobilization at the social network level important for sustained political engagement.
Davide Cantoni, David Y. Yang, Noam Yuchtman, Y. Jane Zhang
"Protests as Strategic Games: Experimental Evidence from Hong Kong’s Democracy Movement"
Quarterly Journal of Economics, 134(2): 1021–1077 (May 2019)
Original article (open access): [QJE website]
Final draft (October 2018): [pdf]

Previous draft (January 2017): [NBER WP]
Abstract: Social scientists have long viewed the decision to protest as strategic, with an individual's participation a function of her beliefs about others' turnout. We conduct a framed field experiment that re-calibrates individuals' beliefs about others' protest participation, in the context of Hong Kong's ongoing anti-authoritarian movement. We elicit subjects' planned participation in an upcoming protest and their prior beliefs about others' participation, in an incentivized manner. One day before the protest, we randomly provide a subset of subjects with truthful information about others' protest plans, and elicit posterior beliefs about protest turnout, again in an incentivized manner. After the protest, we elicit subjects' actual participation. This allows us to identify the causal effects of positively and negatively updated beliefs about others' protest participation on subjects' own turnout. In contrast with the assumptions of many recent models of protest participation, we consistently find evidence of strategic substitutability. We provide guidance regarding plausible sources of strategic substitutability that can be incorporated into theoretical models of protests.
Davide Cantoni, Jeremiah Dittmar, Noam Yuchtman
"Religious Competition and Reallocation: The Political Economy of Secularization in the Protestant Reformation"
Quarterly Journal of Economics, 133(4): 2037–2096 (November 2018)
Original article (open access): [QJE website]
Latest draft (October 2017): [NBER WP]

Previous draft (November 2016): [CEPR WP] or [BEHL WP]
Abstract: Using novel microdata, we document an unintended, first-order consequence of the Protestant Reformation: a massive reallocation of resources from religious to secular purposes. To understand this process, we propose a conceptual framework in which the introduction of religious competition shifts political markets where religious authorities provide legitimacy to rulers in exchange for control over resources. Consistent with our framework, religious competition changed the balance of power between secular and religious elites: secular authorities acquired enormous amounts of wealth from monasteries closed during the Reformation, particularly in Protestant regions. This transfer of resources had important consequences. First, it shifted the allocation of upper-tail human capital. Graduates of Protestant universities increasingly took secular, especially administrative, occupations. Protestant university students increasingly studied secular subjects, especially degrees that prepared students for public sector jobs, rather than church sector-specific theology. Second, it affected the sectoral composition of fixed investment. Particularly in Protestant regions, new construction shifted from religious toward secular purposes, especially the building of palaces and administrative buildings, which reflected the increased wealth and power of secular lords. Reallocation was not driven by preexisting economic or cultural differences. Our findings indicate that the Reformation played an important causal role in the secularization of the West.
Davide Cantoni, Yuyu Chen, David Y. Yang, Noam Yuchtman, Y. Jane Zhang
"Curriculum and Ideology"
Journal of Political Economy, 125(2): 338–392 (April 2017)
Original article: [JPE website]
Latest draft (October 2015): [pdf]

Previous draft (April 2014): [CESifo WP] or [NBER WP]
Media Coverage: [Cass Sunstein on BloombergView] [Deutsche Welle Chinese Net] [Foreign Policy]
Abstract: We study the causal effect of school curricula on students' stated beliefs and attitudes. We exploit a major textbook reform in China that was rolled out between 2004 and 2010 with the explicit intention of shaping youths' ideology. To measure its effect, we present evidence from a novel survey we conducted among 2000 students at Peking University. The sharp, staggered introduction of the new curriculum across provinces allows us to identify the effects of the new educational content in a generalized difference in differences framework. We examine government documents articulating desired consequences of the reform, and identify changes in textbook content and college entrance exams that reflect the government's aims. These changes were often effective: study under the new curriculum is robustly associated with changed views on political participation and democracy in China, increased trust in government officials, and a more skeptical view of free markets.
Leonardo Bursztyn, Davide Cantoni
"A Tear in the Iron Curtain: The Impact of Western Television on Consumption Behavior"
Review of Economics and Statistics, 91(1): 25–41 (March 2016)
Original article: [REStat website]
Latest draft (August 2012): [CEPR WP] or [Munich Econ WP]

Media Coverage: [Handelsblatt] [Die Zeit] [Radio Bayern2] [Boston Globe]
Abstract: This paper examines the impact of exposure to foreign media on the economic behavior of agents in a totalitarian regime. We study private consumption choices focusing on former East Germany, where differential access to Western television was determined by geographic features. Using data collected after the transition to a market economy, we find no evidence of a significant impact of previous exposure to Western television on aggregate consumption levels. However, exposure to Western broadcasts affects the composition of consumption, biasing choices in favor of categories of goods with high intensity of pre-reunification advertisement. The effects vanish by 1998.
Davide Cantoni
"The Economic Effects of the Protestant Reformation: Testing the Weber Hypothesis in the German Lands"
Journal of the European Economic Association, 13(4): 561–598 (August 2015)
Original article: [JEEA website]
Final draft (May 2014): [pdf]
Supplementary Appendix: [pdf]

Previous draft (March 2013): [Munich Econ WP]
Previous draft (December 2010): [UPF Econ WP]
Media Coverage: [Marginal Revolution] [Il Sole 24 Ore] [El País] [El País (2)]
Abstract: Following Max Weber, many theories have hypothesized that Protestantism should have favored economic development. With its religious heterogeneity, the Holy Roman Empire presents an ideal testing ground for this hypothesis. Using population figures of 272 cities in the years 1300–1900, I find no effects of Protestantism on economic growth. The finding is precisely estimated, robust to the inclusion of various controls, and does not depend on data selection or small sample size. Denominational differences in fertility behavior and literacy are unlikely to be major confounding factors. Protestantism has no effect when interacted with other likely determinants of economic development. Instrumental variables estimates, considering the potential endogeneity of religious choice, are similar to the OLS results.
Davide Cantoni, Noam Yuchtman
"Medieval Universities, Legal Institutions, and the Commercial Revolution"
Quarterly Journal of Economics, 129(2): 823–887 (May 2014)
Original article: [QJE website]
Supplementary Appendix: [pdf]
Final draft (October 2013): [CESifo WP]

Previous draft (March 2012): [NBER WP] or [Munich Econ WP]
Media Coverage: [The Atlantic]
Abstract: We present new data documenting medieval Europe's "Commercial Revolution" using information on the establishment of markets in Germany. We use these data to test whether medieval universities played a causal role in expanding economic activity, examining the foundation of Germany's first universities after 1386 following the Papal Schism. We find that the trend rate of market establishment breaks upward in 1386 and that this break is greatest where the distance to a university shrank most. There is no differential pre-1386 trend associated with the reduction in distance to a university, and there is no break in trend in 1386 where university proximity did not change. These results are robust to estimating a variety of specifications that address concerns about the endogeneity of university location. Universities provided training in newly-rediscovered Roman and canon law; students with legal training served in positions that reduced the uncertainty of trade in the Middle Ages. We argue that training in the law, and the consequent development of legal and administrative institutions, was an important channel linking universities and greater economic activity in medieval Germany.
Davide Cantoni, Noam Yuchtman
"The Political Economy of Educational Content and Development: Lessons from History"
Journal of Development Economics, 104: 233–244 (September 2013)
Original article: [JDE website]
Final draft (April 2013): [CESifo WP] or [BEHL WP]

Previous title: "Educational Content, Educational Institutions and Economic Development: Lessons from History"
Previous draft (November 2011): [Munich Econ WP]
Abstract: Beyond years of schooling, educational content can play an important role in the process of economic development. Individuals’ choices of educational content are often shaped by the political economy of government policies that determine the incentives to acquire various skills. We first present a model in which differences in human capital investments emerge as an equilibrium outcome of private decisions and government policy choices. We then illustrate these dynamics in two historical circumstances. In medieval Europe, states and the Church found individuals trained in Roman law valuable, and eventually supported productive investments in this new form of human capital. In late 19th-century China, elites were threatened by the introduction of Western science and engineering and continued to select civil servants—who enjoyed substantial rents—based on their knowledge of the Confucian classics; as a result, investments in productive, modern human capital were not made.
Davide Cantoni
"Adopting a New Religion: The Case of Protestantism in 16th Century Germany"
Economic Journal, 122(560): 502–531 (May 2012)
Original article: [EJ website]
Final draft (August 2011): [pdf]

Previous draft (Barcelona GSE working paper, April 2011): [RePEc page]
Media Coverage: [RES Media Briefing]
Abstract: Using a rich dataset of territories and cities of the Holy Roman Empire in the 16th century, this paper investigates the determinants of adoption and diffusion of Protestantism as a state religion. A territory's distance to Wittenberg, the city where Martin Luther taught, is a major determinant of adoption. This finding is consistent with a theory of strategic neighbourhood interactions: in an uncertain legal context, introducing the Reformation was a risky enterprise for territorial lords, and had higher prospects of success if powerful neighbouring states committed to the new faith first. The predictions of this theory are then compared to the actual patterns of expansion of Protestantism using a panel dataset featuring the dates of introduction of the Reformation.
Daron Acemoglu, Davide Cantoni, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson
"The Consequences of Radical Reform: The French Revolution"
American Economic Review, 101(7): 3286–3307 (December 2011)
Original article: [pdf] or [AER website]

Online data appendix, Replication materials: [AEA web page]
Previous draft (NBER WP 14831, March 2009): [RePEc page]
Media Coverage: [Handelsblatt] [Frankfurter Allg. Sonntagszeitung]
Abstract: The French Revolution had a momentous impact on neighboring countries. It removed the legal and economic barriers protecting oligarchies, established the principle of equality before the law, and prepared economies for the new industrial opportunities of the second half of the 19th century. We present within-Germany evidence on the long-run implications of these institutional reforms. Occupied areas appear to have experienced more rapid urbanization growth, especially after 1850. A two-stage least squares strategy provides evidence consistent with the hypothesis that the reforms instigated by the French had a positive impact on growth.

"It is too soon to say." (Zhou Enlai, asked for his assessment of the 1789 French Revolution)

Work in Progress

"Historical Contingencies, Econometric Problems: The Analysis of Natural Experiments in Economic History" (with Noam Yuchtman)
"Beliefs, Attitudes and Preferences of the Chinese Political Elites" (with Yuyu Chen, David Y. Yang, Noam Yuchtman, Y. Jane Zhang, David Zweig)
"Urbanization in Europe: Regional Variations, 1700–1900"

Other research (Book chapters)

Davide Cantoni, Noam Yuchtman
"Historical Natural Experiments: Bridging Economics and Economic History"
In: Alberto Bisin and Giovanni Federico (eds.), Handbook of Historical Economics, Academic Press 2021.
Publisher site: [link]
Final draft (January 2020): [pdf]

Abstract: The analysis of historical natural experiments has profoundly impacted economics research across fields. In this chapter we trace the development and increasing application of the methodology, both from the perspective of economic historians and from the perspective of economists in other subdisciplines. We argue that the historical natural experiment represents a methodological bridge between economic history and other fields: historians are able to use the cutting edge identification strategies emphasized by applied microeconomists; economists across subfields are able to scour history for useful identifying variation; development and growth economists are able to trace the historical roots of contemporary outcomes, and to identify the ultimate causes of economic growth. Differences in fields suggest differences in scholars' aims of studying historical natural experiments. We propose a taxonomy of three primary motives that reflect priorities in different fields: historians aim to understand causal processes within specific settings. Economists across fields aim to identify "clean" historical events (in whatever context) to test hypotheses of theoretical interest or estimate causal parameters. And, growth and development economists aim to identify past variation that can be causally linked to contemporary outcomes of interest. We summarize important contributions made by research in each category. Finally, we close with a brief discussion of challenges facing each category of work.
Davide Cantoni, Felix Hagemeister, Mark Westcott
"Voting for the far right in Germany"
In: Dalia Marin (ed.), Explaining Germany's Exceptional Recovery, CEPR Press (VoxEU.org Books) 2018.
E-book: [link]
Daron Acemoglu, Davide Cantoni, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson
"From Ancien Regime to Capitalism: The Spread of the French Revolution as a Natural Experiment"
In: Jared Diamond and James A. Robinson (eds.), Natural Experiments of History, Harvard University Press 2010.
Publisher site: [link]
Final draft: [pdf]

Policy and other papers

Davide Cantoni
"China und Hongkong am Scheideweg"
Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, 21(2): 185–196 (June 2020) [link]
Davide Cantoni, Jeremiah Dittmar, Noam Yuchtman
The religious roots of the secular West: The Protestant Reformation and the allocation of resources in Europe
voxEU column (October 2017): [link]
Davide Cantoni, David Y. Yang, Noam Yuchtman
Power to the people? China’s policy trilemma in Hong Kong
LSE Management Blog (October 2017): [link]
Davide Cantoni, Felix Hagemeister, Mark Westcott
Explaining the Alternative für Deutschland party’s electoral success: The shadow of Nazi voting
voxEU column (September 2017): [link]
Davide Cantoni, Yuyu Chen, David Y. Yang, Noam Yuchtman, Y. Jane Zhang
Curriculum and ideology
voxEU column (May 2014): [link]
Davide Cantoni, Noam Yuchtman
How universities helped transform the medieval world
voxEU column (May 2012): [link]
Davide Cantoni
"Godly business"
Foreign Policy, 178 (March/April 2010): [link]
Daron Acemoglu, Davide Cantoni, Simon Johnson, James A. Robinson
How imposed institutional reforms can work
voxEU column (July 2009): [link]