Ruben Durante

“Experience, Narratives, and Climate Change Beliefs”

In this recent paper on political polarization (joint with M. Djourelova, E. Motte, and E. Patacchini), Ruben Durante investigates how experiencing natural disasters affects climate change attitudes, and how this effect is mediated by ideology. In particular, the study documents that exposure to the same disaster increases climate change concerns among liberals but decreases them among conservatives, widening the partisan gap by 11-17%. The documented effect fades over time and with distance from the disaster, is stronger for respondents who are a local political minority, and only holds in areas served by local newspapers.

Mr. Durante studies political economy with a focus on the functioning and impact of traditional and new media in democratic societies. While at CESifo, Professor Durante will work on an ongoing project titled “Personalization of Search Engine Results and Ideological Polarization” (joint with R. Enikolopov and R. Levy) which examines the extent to which personalized search engine results expose users to divergent political content and affect their political views.

Ruben Duranteis is Professor of Economics at the National University of Singapore and ICREA Research Professor at Pompeu Fabra University (on leave). He is also Research Fellow at CEPR, CESifo, and IZA, and Research Advisor at Gallup US. Between 2010 and 2018 he was Assistant Professor and then Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at Sciences Po. He has held visiting positions at Yale University, the Paris School of Economics, and INSEAD. He served as associated editor of the Journal of the European Economic Association and the European Economic Review, and was part of the editorial panel of Economic Policy. His work has been published in top journals in economics, political science, and management and is regularly featured in the popular press. He holds a BA in Economics from the University of Messina, a Master’s in Political Economy from Sorbonne University, and a Master’s and a PhD in Economics from Brown University.