Research
Research papers on political economy, economic history, social networks, and identity formation by Jan Fasnacht.
Identity Polarization and Social Change
Identity boundaries shape who connects with whom. I model how institutional shocks that polarize group identities—competing churches, partisan media, political movements—fragment social networks and create coordination barriers to 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. As a first step, I show that the 1853 Catholic hierarchy restoration gradually increased religious segregation in marriage witness networks, with effects strongest in initially diverse communities.
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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