Research
Research papers on political economy, economic history, social networks, and identity formation by Jan Fasnacht.
Threshold Disclosure in Collective Decisions
Voting-based collective decisions are typically made either anonymously or publicly. Anonymous voting protects truthful expression but conceals individual behavior; public voting provides information about individual votes, but, when one option is socially stigmatized, it can distort participation and choices. We introduce threshold majority voting, in which voters choose a disclosure threshold determining whether and when their votes are revealed. In an experiment at UC Berkeley on the participation of transgender women in women's sports, public voting nearly doubles abstention and reduces support for the stigmatized option. Threshold voting eliminates these distortions while revealing one-third of individual votes.
Identity Polarization and Social Change
Identity polarization can fragment social networks and hinder learning. I develop a model showing how institutional shocks reinforce group boundaries, strengthening within-group cohesion but raising coordination costs for behavioral change. To test this, I construct a linked dataset from 204 million Dutch vital records (1680–1920), introducing collective entity resolution methods to trace family networks and measure identity investment through naming patterns. I leverage the 1853 Catholic hierarchy restoration—a shock to religious competition—to examine how institutional entry reshapes identity expression and network structure.
The Cost of Community
Communities solve collective action problems through dense social ties. But what happens when the collective good requires limiting interaction itself? Linking 500,000 Swiss death notices to ancestral municipalities along Reformation-era boundaries, I find that Catholic ancestry predicts 15% higher COVID-19 excess mortality—even among those with no religious markers. A preregistered survey shows no differential risk perceptions; a pre-pandemic heatwave shows no ancestry gap. The evidence points to denser community networks: Catholic descendants display significantly more organizational affiliations. Religious institutions transmitted forms of social organization—not just beliefs—with effects that persist long after faith fades.
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