Firm-level techonological change and formation of political preferences

An individual’s work environment is a site of preference formation that shapes individual attitudes and political behavior. Economic shocks that impact the workplace can thus potentially translate to long-term political impacts. The related literature typically examines the influence of occupation- or industry-specific contexts or labor market risks. However, the role of the firm and/or establishment, arguably the most evident occupational context condition, has received much less attention. This is due to fundamental challenges in terms of data availability. While combined employee-employer matched administration data has allowed for great progress in the analysis of labor market dynamics, the combination of firm-level context with data on individual political preferences is typically not available. As a result, prior literature often relies on occupation-level proxies of work concepts that should better be measured at the level of firms. For instance, the threat of labor being substituted by artificial intelligence or other technology may vary strongly across firms. This firm-level variation, in turn, is expected to shape political preferences even among voters within the same occupation. Thanks to a unique combination of data sources from Switzerland, this project will overcome this empirical challenge. Individual-level panel data on political preferences matched with firm-level information extracted from the near-universe of online job vacancies published between 2012 and 2022 allows for rare insights into the impact of firm-level exposure to new technology (inferred from information in job ads) on individual political preferences and demand for government protection from structural change.

Valentina Consiglio
PhD Student
Department of Political Science

Prof. Thomas Kurer
Project Leader
Department of Political Science

For further information about the project and data availability please contact:  consiglio@ipz.uzh.ch