Lorenz Gschwent

Lorenz Gschwent

PhD student @ University of Duisburg-Essen

Welcome

I am a PhD student in Economics at the University of Duisburg-Essen and a member of the Research Training Group 2484 Regional Disaprities and Economic Policy. My main research interests are in Political Economy, Regional and Innovation Economics.

Current projects

Censorship in Democracy (with Marcel Caesmann, Janis Goldzycher, and Matteo Grigoletto)

Abstract | Working Paper | VoxEU Column The spread of propaganda, misinformation, and biased narratives from autocratic regimes, especially on social media, is a growing concern in many democracies. Can censorship be an effective tool to curb the spread of such slanted narratives? In this paper, we study the European Union’s ban on Russian state-led news outlets after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. We analyze 775,616 tweets from 133,276 users on Twitter/X, employing a difference-in-differences strategy. We show that the ban reduced pro-Russian slant among users who had previously directly interacted with banned outlets. The impact is most pronounced among users with the highest pre-ban slant levels. However, this effect was short-lived, with slant returning to its pre-ban levels within two weeks post-enforcement. Additionally, we find a detectable albeit less pronounced indirect effect on users who had not directly interacted with the outlets before the ban. We provide evidence that other suppliers of propaganda may have actively sought to mitigate the ban's influence by intensifying their activity, effectively counteracting the persistence and reach of the ban.


The Rise of Health Economics: Transforming the Landscape of Economic Research (with Björn Hammarfelt, Martin Karlsson, and Mathias Kifmann) Revise and Resubmit at Health Economics

Abstract This paper explores the evolving role of health economics within economic research and publishing over the past 30 years. Historically, largely a niche field, health economics has become increasingly prominent, with the share of health economics papers in top journals growing significantly. We aim to identify the factors behind this rise, examining how health economics contributes to the broader economic knowledge base and the roles distinct subfields play. Using a combination of bibliometric methods and natural language processing, we classify abstracts to define health economics. Our findings suggest that the mainstreaming of health economics is driven by innovative, high-quality research, with notable cyclicality in quality ratings that highlights the emergence and impact of distinct subfields within the discipline.


The Effect of a Vacancy Ban on German Housing Markets (with Jakob Gutschlhofer)

Quality, Scope, and Leniency: Strategic Application Behavior at the US Patent Office

Abstract Patent office outcomes significantly influence the quality and direction of innovation and technological growth. In this paper, I show how incentive misalignments between applicants and examiners at the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) generate inefficiencies across the quality distribution of patent applications. I introduce a novel measurement of patent application quality based on state-of-the-art natural language processing (NLP) techniques. I use this measure to document novel stylized facts: higher-quality applications face lower acceptance rates but receive broader intellectual property rights when granted. To explain these patterns, I develop a theoretical model of strategic interaction between applicants and examiners. The model guides an empirical investigation that reveals a bimodal pattern of patents accepted due to lenient examiners over the distribution of quality. I show that this U-shaped distribution arises due to stronger incentives for low- and high-quality applicants to ``gamble" on lenient examiners when selecting the scope of their applications. These findings underscore the importance of USPTO reform targeting the underlying incentive structure and imply that uniform policy reforms may discourage high-quality patent applications.