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: Name: 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.