Oplæg af Alexander Sahn

Alexander Sahn will visit the department and give a talk in the large meeting room on Thursday 16 April. 

Alex is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and Thomas J. Pearsall Fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is currently on leave for the 2025–26 academic year and based at the European University Institute. His research sits at the intersection of political economy and representation, with a particular focus on subnational government in the United States, including housing, participation, public policy, and representation.

He will present the following paper, coauthored with Jacob Brown and Adrian Pietrzak:

Exposure to Homelessness and Support for Policy Remedies

Voters consistently support spending measures to ameliorate homelessness, yet many oppose the specific siting of homeless shelters. In this article, the authors propose that, although plans to build a new shelter may prospectively activate NIMBY opposition, when shelters are actually built, they activate positive policy feedbacks. To test this proposition, they pair data on two statewide ballot initiatives in California with administrative data on new shelter openings, images of street homelessness, police stops, and citizen reports of street encampments. They find that voters living closest to new facilities became more supportive between the two ballot initiatives than those living slightly further away. The findings suggest that voters reward policy action and that NIMBY opposition may be more prospective than retrospective.

Please email Martin Vinæs if you would like to meet Alex sometime during his visit (Wednesday 15 April and Thursday 16 April).