Nicolas Longuet-Marx

I’m on the #EconJobMarket! I study labor, extreme weather adaptation, and inequality.

My JMP addresses an under-studied aspect of the labor market: schedule unpredictability among hourly workers in the service sector.

🧵👇

🚨 New working paper 🚨

In large cities, wages are higher. But so are inequalities. In fact, low-wage workers earn lower real earnings there.

Why? What drives spatial wage disparities? Why some workers work at lower real wages in large cities?

Thrilled to share the fantastic placements of our eight Sustainable Development PhD job market candidates this year!

Anna Papp – Postdoc: MIT Econ | AP: UCSB Bren

Danny Bressler – AP: Bentley Econ

Gabriel Gonzalez Suntil – Economist: Amazon

Isabella Smythe – ML Engineer: Rhizome

Just to emphasize again the key point from this great JMP: there has been a massive shift in political realignment such that less educated voters sort into the Republican Party due to cultural messaging, while economic policy only modestly keeps them in the Democratic Party

#EconJMP #Econsky

You can read the full paper and find more of my work in political economy, environmental economics, and empirical industrial organization on my website: nicolaslonguetmarx.github.io
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I show that current Democratic positions on the environment, which are heavily cultural, deter less-educated voters. In contrast, an equally progressive policy with a stronger economic focus, like a 'Green New Deal,' would attract more support from these voters.
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In the final section of the paper, I use the model to examine how parties' cultural polarization shapes voter support for environmental policy. I show that Democratic candidates' environmental stances are largely cultural, while Republicans emphasize economic dimensions more.
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In contrast, shifts on the demand side—particularly less-educated voters' growing support for progressive economic policies—have pulled less-educated voters toward Democratic candidates. Without these changes, partisan realignment would have been even more pronounced.
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I show that parties' polarization on cultural issues has been a key driver of realignment, leading Democratic candidates to lose less-educated voters and attract more-educated ones. This cultural polarization has been only slightly offset by moderate economic polarization.
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Step 5: Finally, I evaluate how much of the observed changes in voting behavior arise from demand-side versus supply-side factors by simulating counterfactual scenarios in which one factor is held constant.
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I show that party discipline is much stronger in the Republican Party and has grown over time in both parties, leading to an overall uniformity of candidates within each party around the positions of party leaders.
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Step 4: I estimate a model of candidate behavior to assess the degree to which candidates can adjust their positions to reflect constituent demands (from step 3) versus how much they are constrained by the party line.
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I show that less-educated voters consistently support conservative stances on cultural issues while becoming more supportive of progressive economic policies. The reverse is true for more-educated voters.
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A key challenge is that candidates choose their positions partly based on unobserved voter preferences. To isolate causal effects, I compare contiguous precincts across district borders, with precincts sharing a similar taste shock but facing candidates with different positions.
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Step 3: I estimate voter demand for House candidate positions using a structural model of voting behavior, revealing how voters respond to their candidates' stances.
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Tracking the evolution of candidate positions over time reveals that polarization on cultural issues has become twice as pronounced as on economic issues.
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Step 2: To measure House candidate positioning since 2000, I build a multimodal text-and-survey model, combining candidate website and survey data to determine their stances on cultural and economic dimensions.
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I also show that this trend didn’t start in 2016; rather, there has been a gradual increase in the correlation between education and Democratic voting over time.
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I show that realignment along educational lines has outpaced shifts along other demographic dimensions, such as income or race and ethnicity.
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Step 1: To precisely track voting patterns, I build a new panel dataset of precinct-level election results since 2000, capturing changes at a very granular level (~1,000 voters per precinct, totaling 1.6 million precinct results).
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This thread outlines the paper's strategy, which is built on 5 key steps:

TL;DR: I show that parties’ stronger polarization on cultural vs. economic issues has been the main driver of voter realignment. Meanwhile, shifts in preferences—esp. blue-collar voters' growing support for progressive economic policies—have slowed their defection from Democrats.
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Why are blue-collar voters drifting from the Democratic Party? Is it due to shifts in voter preferences or shifts in party positions? What role do cultural versus economic policies play? My Job Market Paper presents an empirical model that unpacks these dynamics.
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