Martin Fiszbein

IEA – Could you walk us through the key moments that shaped your path– from your earliestexposure to economic thinking, to what sparked your interest in the field, and ultimately what drew you to academic research?

Martin – I grew up in Argentina, a country that has sadly experienced many macroeconomic crises, each with severe social consequences. As a child, I witnessed hyperinflation, and during my last years of high school, a prolonged recession drove unemployment to devastating levels. Many people were badly affected, making it a constant topic of concern and conversation. These experiences sparked my interest in economics to make sense of what was happening around me.

My earliest exposure to economic thinking came through history classes in elementary and high school. Lessons on early human societies—hunter-gatherers, the dawn of agriculture, the first cities—and schoolbooks on early national history were filled with economic themes. Even later in my studies, I found these perspectives—blending political economy with history and geography—more engaging than basic supply-and-demand analysis and abstract models, which I learned to appreciate more with time.

I’ve also always loved books, both fiction and non-fiction. From an early age, I knew I wanted to do something centered on reading and writing. And since a career as a fiction writer felt quite risky, I chose academia instead.

IEA – Your recent work on democratic institutions examines variation in exposure across time periods and regions. What surprised you most about the relationship between institutional exposure and political attitudes? What alternative hypotheses did you consider?

Martin – The key finding of my paper with Daron Acemoglu, Nicolás Ajzenman, Cevat Giray Aksoy and Carlos Molina is reflected in the title: “(Successful) Democracies Breed Their Own Support.” We find that exposure to democratic institutions fosters support for democracy, but only when they are successful in terms of economic growth, public goods provision, peace and political stability, and control of corruption.

I find it intuitive that successful democracies generate more support than unsuccessful ones. What surprised me, however, was that success appears to be a necessary condition for fostering democratic support. Our results suggest that without success, democratic institutions do not inherently cultivate commitment to democratic values or rights. This is concerning, as it implies that support for democracy is largely instrumental or transactional—people back democracy only when it delivers results.

This finding has critical implications amid democratic backsliding and the rise of authoritarian populism. Civic norms are essential for democratic institutions to endure, as formal rules alone may not suffice. Understanding how and when democracies cultivate public support is key to strengthening their resilience.

IEA – Your work on frontier gender roles reveals an interesting tension – women were more likely to hold high-status occupations when employed, yet overall female labour force participation was lower. Could you walk us through how you disentangled these seemingly contradictory patterns, and what they tell us about the mechanisms behind norm formation?

Martin – Yes, indeed. In our study of gender roles on the historical American frontier (joint with Sam Bazzi, Abel Brodeur, and Joanne Haddad), we document two seemingly contradictory patterns: women were less likely to work for pay, yet those who did held occupations with higher socio-economic status. While this may appear paradoxical, it aligns with predictions from a Roy model. On the frontier, women faced stronger barriers to labor market participation, given the demands of childcare in a high-fertility context, exacerbated by isolation from extended family, markets, and social infrastructure. This led to a lower share of women working for pay outside the home. However, those who overcame these barriers were likely those with the highest returns to employment, resulting in positive selection into the workforce. This selection mechanism explains why working women had higher earnings and socio-economic status.

We can document these patterns by leveraging very rich microdata from the U.S. census. The data allows us to observe not just aggregate county-level outcomes—such as participation rates and average socio-economic status—but also the full distribution of individual labor market outcomes. By capturing both the average experience of women and the upper tail, our study highlights a more nuanced view of gender roles on the frontier. This mixed pattern also means that the implications for social norms are not obvious: the key question is whether average conditions or the experiences of high-status working women were more influential in shaping norms. What we find is that historical exposure to frontier conditions is associated with lower long-run female labor force participation, higher marriage rates, higher fertility, and more conservative gender norms linking women to the household and to family roles.