Dear FPSE faculty members, graduate students, WINPEC researchers

This is the WINPEC Administrative Office.

We are pleased to announce the WINPEC Seminar from Frieder Mitsch-sensei.

Date and Time: 10/27（Monday）13：15 ～ 14：45

Format: In-person

Location: Building 3, Room 201

Language: English

Theme: Early-Life Exposure to Urbanization Shapes Long-Term Political Outlooks

Name of Speaker: Professor Neil Lee　(PhD in Economic Geography, LSE)

the event summary:

Urban-rural polarisation of values is a key societal cleavage of our time. However, there is still de-

bate about whether the differences observed across places are contextual or purely compositional. We

provide novel causal evidence showing that exposure to urban density influences individual outlooks

beyond compositional effects, but this influence is primarily driven by the environments where in-

dividuals spend their early years. We do this by using household panel data from both the UK and

Switzerland, which allows us to combine Two-Stage-Least-Squares and ’Movers’ research designs. We

show with two different approaches that exposure to urban density before age 20 causally increases

support for immigration and gender equality, highlighting the lasting influence of exposure to urban

density early in life.