Yves Kläy
PhD Candidate in Political Economy · University of Fribourg, Switzerland
Research Interests
About Me
I am a PhD Candidate in Political Economy at the University of Fribourg, supervised by Prof. Dr. Reiner Eichenberger. My research lies at the intersection of political economy, legislative behavior, and direct democracy, using empirical methods to study how democratic institutions represent citizen preferences.
Currently (Feb–Jul 2026), I am a Visiting Researcher at the ARC Training Centre for Behavioural Insights for Technology Adoption at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. I also work as a Research Assistant at the Institute for Swiss Economic Policy (IWP), Lucerne.
Recent Publications
Substantive Representation of Women: Empirical Evidence British Journal of Political Science 55(e32), 2025 Using 47,527 votes by all 777 Swiss parliamentarians (1996–2022), we find that female politicians are more responsive to women’s preferences than male politicians — but only on social policy. For all other legislative proposals, a politician’s gender makes no difference. DOI
Congruence of Female and Male Legislators With the Preferences of Women and Men Economics Letters 242: 111854, 2024 Matching 47,527 parliamentary votes to Swiss referendum outcomes, we find that female legislators are no more aligned with women’s preferences than male legislators, once party affiliation is taken into account. DOI
Representation, Party Discipline, and the Condorcet Jury Theorem Revise & resubmit · 2026 Using 263 Swiss referenda (1992–2024), we show that larger legislative delegations better represent their constituents — but only when accounting for party discipline, which reduces the number of independently acting politicians and weakens this benefit. Working Paper