Yves Kläy

Yves Kläy

PhD Candidate in Political Economy at the University of Fribourg. Expected completion: August 2027.

Fields: Political Economy, Public Economics, Direct Democracy, Legislative Behavior

About

I am a doctoral researcher at the University of Fribourg, supervised by Prof. Dr. Reiner Eichenberger. My research examines how democratic institutions translate citizen preferences into political decisions. Using Switzerland’s system of representative and direct democracy, I study how legislators represent their constituents, how party discipline shapes collective decisions, how elected representatives influence referendum outcomes, and how official voter information affects political participation and vote choice. I combine parliamentary votes, referendum results, survey data, and political texts with causal inference, regression discontinuity designs, text-as-data methods, and experiments using calibrated language-model agents.

I also work as a research assistant at the Institute for Swiss Economic Policy (IWP), in Lucerne. At the IWP, I conduct research on and contribute to the Parlameter, an interactive online tool that makes Swiss politics more transparent.

Research

Curriculum Vitae

PDF Download Full CV October 2026

Education

Appointments

Teaching

Talks

Grants

Service

Training

Skills & Languages

Software
R, LaTeX, Git, Claude Code
Methods
Causal Inference
Languages
German (native), English (C1), French (C1)

Contact

Email
yves.klaey@unifr.ch
Office
Department of Economics, Office F 412
University of Fribourg, Bd. de Pérolles 90
1700 Fribourg, Switzerland
Profiles