When water scarcity can be attributed to identifiable actors rather than solely to climatic conditions, aggrieved individuals may be more likely to mobilize in response. I estimate the effects of water rights allocated to commercial uses—primarily agriculture and mining—on water availability and social conflict in Chile. I construct a panel that combines georeferenced surface- and groundwater rights held by more than 50,000 users with streamflow data, complaints filed with the Water Authority, water-theft lawsuits, and protest events, across 80 river basins from 2005 to 2024. To measure competing water allocation, I classify new rights according to whether they are hydrologically connected to each spatial unit, and divide the volume granted by the unit’s renewable flow. This measure exploits river-flow direction and distance from intake points, allowing me to estimate spatial spillover effects. A 10-percentage-point increase in competing allocation reduces annual streamflow by 7.3%. While I find no effect on complaints or water-theft lawsuits, protests increase, particularly those targeting firms. The same increase raises the probability of a protest against firms by 8% relative to its baseline rate. The effect is larger where a greater share of renewable flow is already committed, consistent with more rivalry over the resource driving people to the streets. It is also larger where water rights are concentrated among a few large holders, consistent with concentrated ownership creating visible targets which facilitate collective action. The effect is further amplified during severe droughts.

We study the effects of a large unconditional cash transfer program on social preferences of children in rural Kenya using a randomized controlled trial. We measure the social preferences of 4,022 children with survey questions and incentivized behavioral games three years after the cash transfer. First, we find no persistent economic effects of the program. Additionally, we find no consistent evidence that children from the treatment group or that children from the spillover group are more or less prosocial than children from the control group. However, we find some evidence of reduced psychological well-being among adults and children in spillover households.

Despite numerous journalistic accounts, systematic quantitative evidence on economic conditions during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic remains scarce for most low- and middle-income countries, partly due to limitations of official economic statistics in environments with large informal sectors and subsistence agriculture. We assemble evidence from over 30,000 respondents in 16 original household surveys from nine countries in Africa (Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Sierra Leone), Asia (Bangladesh, Nepal, Philippines), and Latin America (Colombia). We document declines in employment and income in all settings beginning March 2020. The share of households experiencing an income drop ranges from 8 to 87% (median, 68%). Household coping strategies and government assistance were insufficient to sustain pre-crisis living standards, resulting in widespread food insecurity and dire economic conditions even 3 months into the crisis. We discuss promising policy responses and speculate about the risk of persistent adverse effects, especially among children and other vulnerable groups.

This paper examines how flooding events influence climate policy action, exploring the role of political regimes and electoral accountability in shaping these reactions. In a dynamic event-study setting, I analyze climate policy responses to severe flooding events in 172 countries and all U.S. states. Results show that a severe flood increases the likelihood of enacting national adaptation policies in democratic countries by 27 percentage points and do not significantly impact national mitigation policies. Bundled policies, which integrate adaptation and mitigation, show a moderate positive response in democracies. In non-democratic countries, severe floods have negligible or even negative effects on the enactment of climate policy. The U.S. state-level analysis reveals a rise in disaster-specific legislation following floods, with stronger effects in swing states. This study underscores the distinct dynamics of adaptation versus mitigation policies and the influence of institutions and electoral accountability when it comes to policy responses to climate shocks.

Why do firms take public positions on divisive societal issues? We assemble a comprehensive dataset on corporate stance-taking in the United States, using large language models to read 52,000 news articles and press releases about 836 companies that belonged to the S&P 500 between 2008 and 2025. We identify 9,917 stances on nine partisan issues such as climate change, abortion or racial discrimination. Stance-taking increased fourfold between 2008 and 2021 before receding, is overwhelmingly liberal, and a quarter of stances have no business justification. It is only weakly related to lobbying and campaign contributions and, unlike them, does not follow the electoral cycle. Corporate stances follow the news cycle instead: firms speak in the month an issue peaks in media coverage and public searches. Consumer-facing firms, and firms whose employees, executives, board members, and consumers lean Democratic, take more liberal stances. We conclude that corporate stances are more likely to reflect firms’ intention to participate in public debate rather than an attempt to influence policy for business reasons.

As climate change reshapes water availability and economic development raises demand, water-related conflicts are proliferating. We study the extent to which these conflicts affect electoral politics. Using data on geolocated water conflicts in Andalusia, Spain (1989–2022) and a difference-in-differences design, we document that these conflicts trigger meaningful electoral shifts conditional on incumbent identity. In municipalities where PSOE held the mayoralty when the conflict began, PSOE’s vote share falls by 4 to 7 percentage points over three election cycles. The mainstream opposition (PP) does not claim those votes and turnout falls, so much of the incumbent’s loss leaves the electorate. Moreover, we document a fragmentation of the party system, with both the total number of parties competing rising and brand-new parties entering the race. Those entrants are local contestants against incumbents and against national party control of municipal politics rather than environmental parties. This paper contributes to our understanding of the politics of natural resources, in particular when and how environmental issues become politicised and their ability to fragment established political parties.

Three million people participated in the Women’s March against discrimination in January 2017, the largest single-day protest in the history of the United States. The inaugural event sparked a grassroots political movement with the goal of increasing the representation of women and other marginalized groups in the political sphere. We show that protesters in the 2017 march increased political preferences for women and people from ethnic minorities in the 2018 House of Representatives Election. Using machine-chosen daily weather shocks as exogenous drivers of attendance at the 2017 march, we find that protesters increased turnout at the House Election and the vote shares obtained by marginalized groups, particularly women, irrespective of their party affiliation. We conclude that protests can help to empower historically underrepresented groups through changes in local political preferences.