Luis Bosshart

Academy Scholar
Harvard University, Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies
lbosshart@fas.harvard.edu

I work on political economy and study how institutions shape political and economic development over time. I’m currently an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. I received my PhD from the London School of Economics in 2025. [CV]

Crisis and Absolutism: A Design-based Analysis of the Thirty Years‘ War, with M. Weigand
Conditionally Accepted, Quarterly Journal of Economics
Abstract
We examine how the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48), the largest conflict in pre-modern Europe, contributed to the rise of absolutism. We use planned troop movements from secret military communications to estimate the effect of town-level troop presence on the expansion of ruler-controlled fiscal and military capacity and the dismantling of parliaments. During the war, troop presence increased the value of delegating resource mobilization to rulers. After the war, rulers used this capacity, in collaboration with landed elites, to weaken parliaments. Courts and city leagues limited parliamentary decline by alleviating contracting frictions in resource mobilization. With parliaments eliminated, militarized absolutist regimes persisted for centuries. Our findings highlight a dynamic trade-off in the concentration of executive power during states of emergency.

Political Competition and Economic Divergence: Development Before and After the Black Death, with J. Dittmar
Revise and Resubmit, Quarterly Journal of Economics
Abstract [Video]
We study how political competition drove a major divergence in development after the labor supply shock of the Black Death. We leverage the interaction between the timing of the exogenous labor supply shock and a boundary between the politically concentrated, low competition East and the politically fragmented, high competition West of Europe. We investigate disaggregated panel data 1200-1800 and find that after the shock, urban construction and the development of city institutions fell by one-third and remained depressed where political competition was low ex ante. This holds (1) comparing neighboring and otherwise similar cities on either side of the boundary, (2) comparing cities subject to the same ruler within states spanning the boundary, and (3) using dynastic shocks as an IV for local political concentration. We find this urban divergence shifted outside options in labor markets and predicts the subsequent institutionalization of serfdom and the spread of farms using labor coercion.

Coordination and Selection in the Rise of Fascism: The ‘Ordinary Men’ of the Nazi Party, with M. Deter, L. Heldring, C. Mohr, M. Weigand
Abstract
We digitize and analyze the near-universe of National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) membership records and link them to population and industrial censuses. We use these data to describe who joined, when, and how mass entry spread. Three findings emerge. First, we find that nearly all spatial variation arises among municipalities within counties, the finest administrative unit available in prior research. Second, early party members were socially selected, but this selection vanished as the party expanded. SS members’ remained different: younger, more educated, and higher ideological alignment, as measured by the display of Nazi insignia in membership portraits. Third, entry occurred in discrete waves, with later members disproportionately following earlier members from the same communities, coworkers, and families. Otherwise similar municipalities diverged after an early member joined. Local increases in party membership are associated with subsequent deportations of Germany’s Jews. These descriptive findings are consistent with a process in which social interaction and coordination helped transform a selective political organization into a mass movement.

Shifting Norms and Political Demand: Denazification in postwar Germany
Abstract
Can states and societies shift social norms? In a major denazification program, millions of Germans were questioned about their political past by courts. This paper documents how denazification shaped the emerging political landscape in postwar Germany. I leverage sharp variation in denazification across Allied occupation zones, across districts, and within districts. I find that broader denazification reduced the demand for nationalist policies and changed social norms. Differences are driven by mass rather than elite cases and political consequences are observed absent major punishment. The results indicate that the breadth of transitional justice can be more important than its severity in coordinating norms.

Work in Progress

Coordination and Collusion: Evidence from German Industrialization, with M. Weigand

Red Zones: Forced Displacement and Support for Far-Right Parties, with E. Dinas, F. Foos, and V. Fouka

Trade Shock and Political Development, with J. Dittmar 

Mass Media of Remembering: The Role of TV in Coming to Terms with the Nazi Past