Léo Picard
@leops95.bsky.social
PhD student in Economics @unibas.ch
Climate policy, political communication
leopicard.net
Climate policy, political communication
leopicard.net
Reposted by Léo Picard
Political communication research overwhelmingly relies on text. But parliamentary speech is multimodal! In our new @psrm.bsky.social article, Mathias Rask and I show that legislators also signal partisan conflict nonverbally— through changes in vocal pitch during floor speeches. 🧵 1/11 #polisky
December 4, 2025 at 3:19 PM
Political communication research overwhelmingly relies on text. But parliamentary speech is multimodal! In our new @psrm.bsky.social article, Mathias Rask and I show that legislators also signal partisan conflict nonverbally— through changes in vocal pitch during floor speeches. 🧵 1/11 #polisky
Reposted by Léo Picard
And new paper out: Pleias 1.0: the First Family of Language Models Trained on Fully Open Data
How we train an open everything model on a new pretraining environment with releasable data (Common Corpus) with an open source framework (Nanotron from HuggingFace).
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
How we train an open everything model on a new pretraining environment with releasable data (Common Corpus) with an open source framework (Nanotron from HuggingFace).
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
September 27, 2025 at 11:44 AM
And new paper out: Pleias 1.0: the First Family of Language Models Trained on Fully Open Data
How we train an open everything model on a new pretraining environment with releasable data (Common Corpus) with an open source framework (Nanotron from HuggingFace).
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
How we train an open everything model on a new pretraining environment with releasable data (Common Corpus) with an open source framework (Nanotron from HuggingFace).
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Reposted by Léo Picard
How much did Elon's takeover reshape Twitter/X? How did the partisan tilt of social media use change from 2020 to 2024?
The ANES 2024 data is out — and this thread answers all your burning questions! 🔥
The ANES 2024 data is out — and this thread answers all your burning questions! 🔥
September 16, 2025 at 11:20 AM
How much did Elon's takeover reshape Twitter/X? How did the partisan tilt of social media use change from 2020 to 2024?
The ANES 2024 data is out — and this thread answers all your burning questions! 🔥
The ANES 2024 data is out — and this thread answers all your burning questions! 🔥
Reposted by Léo Picard
Recently accepted by #QJE, “Ideas Have Consequences: The Impact of Law and Economics on American Justice,” by Ash (@elliottash.bsky.social), Chen, and Naidu: doi.org/10.1093/qje/...
Ideas Have Consequences The Impact of Law and Economics on American Justice*
Abstract. This paper empirically studies the effects of the early law-and-economics movement on the U.S. judiciary. We focus on the Manne Economics Institu
doi.org
September 10, 2025 at 1:02 AM
Recently accepted by #QJE, “Ideas Have Consequences: The Impact of Law and Economics on American Justice,” by Ash (@elliottash.bsky.social), Chen, and Naidu: doi.org/10.1093/qje/...
Reposted by Léo Picard
🌅📙 64.3
Do narcissistic leaders fuel political division? 🧠📊
These authors (🧵⬇️) find that when voters feel close to a leader with dark traits they become more polarized, disliking opposing parties even more. #AffectivePolarization #PoliticalPsychology
🔗https://buff.ly/ptbrrU6
Do narcissistic leaders fuel political division? 🧠📊
These authors (🧵⬇️) find that when voters feel close to a leader with dark traits they become more polarized, disliking opposing parties even more. #AffectivePolarization #PoliticalPsychology
🔗https://buff.ly/ptbrrU6
Ripping the public apart? Politicians’ dark personality and affective polarization
ALESSANDRO NAI, FREDERICO FERREIRA DA SILVA, LOES AALDERING, KATJANA GATTERMANN, DIEGO GARZIA
buff.ly
August 29, 2025 at 11:02 AM
🌅📙 64.3
Do narcissistic leaders fuel political division? 🧠📊
These authors (🧵⬇️) find that when voters feel close to a leader with dark traits they become more polarized, disliking opposing parties even more. #AffectivePolarization #PoliticalPsychology
🔗https://buff.ly/ptbrrU6
Do narcissistic leaders fuel political division? 🧠📊
These authors (🧵⬇️) find that when voters feel close to a leader with dark traits they become more polarized, disliking opposing parties even more. #AffectivePolarization #PoliticalPsychology
🔗https://buff.ly/ptbrrU6
Reposted by Léo Picard
Thrilled to see our paper published in the American Economic Review!! 👇👇👇
We show that candidates in US and French elections move to the center during the campaign, reflecting strategic adjustment to their opponents.
@aeajournals.bsky.social with R. Di Tella, R. Kotti and @clpennec.bsky.social (1/n)
We show that candidates in US and French elections move to the center during the campaign, reflecting strategic adjustment to their opponents.
@aeajournals.bsky.social with R. Di Tella, R. Kotti and @clpennec.bsky.social (1/n)
Forthcoming in the AER: "Keep your Enemies Closer: Strategic Platform Adjustments during U.S. and French Elections" by Rafael Di Tella, Randy Kotti, Caroline Le Pennec, and Vincent Pons. www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...
Keep your Enemies Closer: Strategic Platform Adjustments during U.S. and French Elections
(Forthcoming Article) - We study changes in political discourse during campaigns, using a novel dataset of candidate websites
for U.S. House elections, 2002-2016, and manifestos for French parliamenta...
www.aeaweb.org
August 4, 2025 at 11:26 AM
Thrilled to see our paper published in the American Economic Review!! 👇👇👇
We show that candidates in US and French elections move to the center during the campaign, reflecting strategic adjustment to their opponents.
@aeajournals.bsky.social with R. Di Tella, R. Kotti and @clpennec.bsky.social (1/n)
We show that candidates in US and French elections move to the center during the campaign, reflecting strategic adjustment to their opponents.
@aeajournals.bsky.social with R. Di Tella, R. Kotti and @clpennec.bsky.social (1/n)
Reposted by Léo Picard
An unpopular view: new diff-in-diff methods have been a setback for empirical work. I see an increased flow of papers that do 5 variants of them plus extensive torturing of parallel trends robustness to "prove" that a weak research design is solid. That effort could've been spent more productively
June 18, 2025 at 3:53 PM
An unpopular view: new diff-in-diff methods have been a setback for empirical work. I see an increased flow of papers that do 5 variants of them plus extensive torturing of parallel trends robustness to "prove" that a weak research design is solid. That effort could've been spent more productively
Reposted by Léo Picard
🚨NEW PAPER: Why are Members of Congress so extreme?
We conducted a 4-wave panel of thousands of voters in 27 districts during last year’s primary AND general elections to trace polarization’s roots
The results challenge conventional wisdom… and suggest lessons for parties🧵👇
We conducted a 4-wave panel of thousands of voters in 27 districts during last year’s primary AND general elections to trace polarization’s roots
The results challenge conventional wisdom… and suggest lessons for parties🧵👇
May 27, 2025 at 2:07 PM
🚨NEW PAPER: Why are Members of Congress so extreme?
We conducted a 4-wave panel of thousands of voters in 27 districts during last year’s primary AND general elections to trace polarization’s roots
The results challenge conventional wisdom… and suggest lessons for parties🧵👇
We conducted a 4-wave panel of thousands of voters in 27 districts during last year’s primary AND general elections to trace polarization’s roots
The results challenge conventional wisdom… and suggest lessons for parties🧵👇
Reposted by Léo Picard
Forthcoming in AER: Insights: "Web Search Personalization during the US 2020 Election" by Ulrich Matter and Roland Hodler. www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...
Web Search Personalization during the US 2020 Election
(Forthcoming Article) - We study the impact of web search personalization on ideological
segregation in search results. We deploy 150 synthetic internet
users with randomized partisan browsing prefere...
www.aeaweb.org
May 7, 2025 at 12:26 PM
Forthcoming in AER: Insights: "Web Search Personalization during the US 2020 Election" by Ulrich Matter and Roland Hodler. www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...
Reposted by Léo Picard
Breaking: Pleias releases a new generation of small reasoning models for RAG and source synthesis. Pleias-RAG-350M and Pleias-RAG-1B come with built-in support for source citation, SOTA performance and an accuracy comparable to models ten times their size. huggingface.co/PleIAs/Pleia...
April 24, 2025 at 3:29 PM
Breaking: Pleias releases a new generation of small reasoning models for RAG and source synthesis. Pleias-RAG-350M and Pleias-RAG-1B come with built-in support for source citation, SOTA performance and an accuracy comparable to models ten times their size. huggingface.co/PleIAs/Pleia...
Reposted by Léo Picard
Elites’ violent rhetoric increases support for political violence among co-partisans in the public
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
The Effects of Partisan Elites’ Violent Rhetoric on Support for Political Violence - Political Behavior
Violent partisan hostility is a growing concern for American democracy, yet the role of partisan elites in driving support for political violence remains underexplored. This is especially problematic ...
link.springer.com
April 21, 2025 at 1:32 AM
Elites’ violent rhetoric increases support for political violence among co-partisans in the public
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Reposted by Léo Picard
Prompted by news of prosecutors seeking death penalty for Luigi #Mangione, we share findings from a natural experiment based on his case.
We find that Mangione's arrest led to a small rise in support for #PoliticalViolence among Dems.
📝 Preprint: osf.io/preprints/os...
📊 Data & code: osf.io/y5mn3/
We find that Mangione's arrest led to a small rise in support for #PoliticalViolence among Dems.
📝 Preprint: osf.io/preprints/os...
📊 Data & code: osf.io/y5mn3/
New preprint out with @cvargiu.bsky.social
We use the Luigi #Mangione case (assassination + arrest) as natural experiment and show that it led to a (slight) uptick in support for #PoliticalViolence among Dems
Feedback very welcome!
➡️ Preprint: osf.io/preprints/os...
➡️ Data and code: osf.io/y5mn3
We use the Luigi #Mangione case (assassination + arrest) as natural experiment and show that it led to a (slight) uptick in support for #PoliticalViolence among Dems
Feedback very welcome!
➡️ Preprint: osf.io/preprints/os...
➡️ Data and code: osf.io/y5mn3
April 3, 2025 at 1:35 PM
Prompted by news of prosecutors seeking death penalty for Luigi #Mangione, we share findings from a natural experiment based on his case.
We find that Mangione's arrest led to a small rise in support for #PoliticalViolence among Dems.
📝 Preprint: osf.io/preprints/os...
📊 Data & code: osf.io/y5mn3/
We find that Mangione's arrest led to a small rise in support for #PoliticalViolence among Dems.
📝 Preprint: osf.io/preprints/os...
📊 Data & code: osf.io/y5mn3/
Reposted by Léo Picard
🚨New Working Paper:
The Value of Worker Rights in Collective Bargaining
w/ @elliottash.bsky.social , W. Bentley MacLeod & Suresh Naidu
We propose novel NLP methods applied to 30,000 collective bargaining agreements to quantify the value of worker rights.
👉 nber.org/papers/w33605
🧵1/7
The Value of Worker Rights in Collective Bargaining
w/ @elliottash.bsky.social , W. Bentley MacLeod & Suresh Naidu
We propose novel NLP methods applied to 30,000 collective bargaining agreements to quantify the value of worker rights.
👉 nber.org/papers/w33605
🧵1/7
March 24, 2025 at 1:45 PM
🚨New Working Paper:
The Value of Worker Rights in Collective Bargaining
w/ @elliottash.bsky.social , W. Bentley MacLeod & Suresh Naidu
We propose novel NLP methods applied to 30,000 collective bargaining agreements to quantify the value of worker rights.
👉 nber.org/papers/w33605
🧵1/7
The Value of Worker Rights in Collective Bargaining
w/ @elliottash.bsky.social , W. Bentley MacLeod & Suresh Naidu
We propose novel NLP methods applied to 30,000 collective bargaining agreements to quantify the value of worker rights.
👉 nber.org/papers/w33605
🧵1/7
Reposted by Léo Picard
Many feel that politics globally has become toxic and hostile over recent years.
But is this actually the case? And if so, who's to blame? What issues are driving toxicity?
We analyze 18M tweets from politicians in 17 countries to find out!
w/
@julianachueri.bsky.social
arxiv.org/pdf/2503.22411
But is this actually the case? And if so, who's to blame? What issues are driving toxicity?
We analyze 18M tweets from politicians in 17 countries to find out!
w/
@julianachueri.bsky.social
arxiv.org/pdf/2503.22411
March 31, 2025 at 8:06 AM
Many feel that politics globally has become toxic and hostile over recent years.
But is this actually the case? And if so, who's to blame? What issues are driving toxicity?
We analyze 18M tweets from politicians in 17 countries to find out!
w/
@julianachueri.bsky.social
arxiv.org/pdf/2503.22411
But is this actually the case? And if so, who's to blame? What issues are driving toxicity?
We analyze 18M tweets from politicians in 17 countries to find out!
w/
@julianachueri.bsky.social
arxiv.org/pdf/2503.22411
Reposted by Léo Picard
J’invite les intéressés à lire la toute première étude scientifique attestant de la dérive idéologique de CNEWS, publiée dans le prestigieux Journal of Information Technology and Politics, et dans laquelle je démontre que les téléspectateurs de CNEWS sont plus radicaux encore que ceux de Fox News.
French Fox News? Audience-level metrics for the comparative study of news audience hyperpartisanship
French news channel CNEWS is regularly compared to Fox News due to presumed ties with the far right, and for promoting conspiracy theories and partisan propaganda. Using data from the ReCitCom proj...
www.tandfonline.com
February 17, 2024 at 12:34 PM
J’invite les intéressés à lire la toute première étude scientifique attestant de la dérive idéologique de CNEWS, publiée dans le prestigieux Journal of Information Technology and Politics, et dans laquelle je démontre que les téléspectateurs de CNEWS sont plus radicaux encore que ceux de Fox News.
Reposted by Léo Picard
Just published in @jpube.bsky.social:
"How in-person conversations shape political polarization: Quasi-experimental evidence from a nationwide initiative"
By @ximengfang.bsky.social, Sven Heuser, & Lasse Stoetzer
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... #econsky
"How in-person conversations shape political polarization: Quasi-experimental evidence from a nationwide initiative"
By @ximengfang.bsky.social, Sven Heuser, & Lasse Stoetzer
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... #econsky
February 23, 2025 at 7:42 PM
Just published in @jpube.bsky.social:
"How in-person conversations shape political polarization: Quasi-experimental evidence from a nationwide initiative"
By @ximengfang.bsky.social, Sven Heuser, & Lasse Stoetzer
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... #econsky
"How in-person conversations shape political polarization: Quasi-experimental evidence from a nationwide initiative"
By @ximengfang.bsky.social, Sven Heuser, & Lasse Stoetzer
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... #econsky
Reposted by Léo Picard
“They said it could not be done”. We’re releasing Pleias 1.0, the first suite of models trained on open data (either permissibly licensed or uncopyrighted): Pleias-3b, Pleias-1b and Pleias-350m, all based on the two trillion tokens set from Common Corpus.
December 5, 2024 at 4:39 PM
“They said it could not be done”. We’re releasing Pleias 1.0, the first suite of models trained on open data (either permissibly licensed or uncopyrighted): Pleias-3b, Pleias-1b and Pleias-350m, all based on the two trillion tokens set from Common Corpus.
Reposted by Léo Picard
📢 Our new paper in Political Analysis explains how to use LLMs like GPT-4o, Llama or Mistral to estimate the ideological and policy position of political texts. Our approach is fast, reliable, cost-effective and reproducible and works with texts written in different languages 1/7 cup.org/4axBEXo
Positioning Political Texts with Large Language Models by Asking and Averaging | Political Analysis | Cambridge Core
Positioning Political Texts with Large Language Models by Asking and Averaging
cup.org
January 28, 2025 at 7:00 AM
📢 Our new paper in Political Analysis explains how to use LLMs like GPT-4o, Llama or Mistral to estimate the ideological and policy position of political texts. Our approach is fast, reliable, cost-effective and reproducible and works with texts written in different languages 1/7 cup.org/4axBEXo
Reposted by Léo Picard
The adverse effects of trade and globalization have become politically salient in a way that many of the other determinants of inequality have not. | Dimensions of Inequality: The IFS Deaton Review | academic.oup.com/ooec/article...
Trade and globalization
Greater openness to international trade has had significant impacts on the structure of the UK and other advanced economies. The role that this greater ope
academic.oup.com
January 20, 2025 at 10:05 PM
The adverse effects of trade and globalization have become politically salient in a way that many of the other determinants of inequality have not. | Dimensions of Inequality: The IFS Deaton Review | academic.oup.com/ooec/article...
Reposted by Léo Picard
Posted this a few weeks ago over in Cacotopia. Including here in case people are interested in best practices to help researchers accurately, credibly, and ethically use Generative AI (GenAI) to enhance their experimental research:
ideas.repec.org/p/feb/artefa...
#EconBluesky
ideas.repec.org/p/feb/artefa...
#EconBluesky
12 Best Practices for Leveraging Generative AI in Experiment
We provide twelve best practices and discuss how each practice can help researchers accurately, credibly, and ethically use Generative AI (GenAI) to enhance experimental research. We split the twelve
ideas.repec.org
December 11, 2024 at 10:02 PM
Posted this a few weeks ago over in Cacotopia. Including here in case people are interested in best practices to help researchers accurately, credibly, and ethically use Generative AI (GenAI) to enhance their experimental research:
ideas.repec.org/p/feb/artefa...
#EconBluesky
ideas.repec.org/p/feb/artefa...
#EconBluesky
Reposted by Léo Picard
New study by @nickbichay.bsky.social
Radical-Right parties participating in elections disenchant and demobilize voters, endangering (not "correcting") democracy!
RR participation in elections is associated with lower(!) turnout.
But don't RR parties bring non-voters to the ballots? Not really.
Radical-Right parties participating in elections disenchant and demobilize voters, endangering (not "correcting") democracy!
RR participation in elections is associated with lower(!) turnout.
But don't RR parties bring non-voters to the ballots? Not really.
December 5, 2024 at 9:57 AM
New study by @nickbichay.bsky.social
Radical-Right parties participating in elections disenchant and demobilize voters, endangering (not "correcting") democracy!
RR participation in elections is associated with lower(!) turnout.
But don't RR parties bring non-voters to the ballots? Not really.
Radical-Right parties participating in elections disenchant and demobilize voters, endangering (not "correcting") democracy!
RR participation in elections is associated with lower(!) turnout.
But don't RR parties bring non-voters to the ballots? Not really.