The lecture will be held in hybrid form on Zoom and in person in lecture hall K.0.11-12 on the ground floor on October 9, 2025, starting at 1:00 p.m.
Presenter: Attila Gáspár
Title: Dusting the Data: Technological Change and Voter Behaviour in the Early 20th Century
Abstract: This presentation introduces an ongoing (2024–2028) OTKA research project that employs modern machine learning tools to digitize and analyze historical data. I will present the applied methods, the developed tools, as well as the first research topic and its accompanying databases. In this topic, we examine how the mechanization of agriculture in the early 20th century was connected to various social tensions (waves of strikes, the spread of extremist movements).
Bio: Attila Gáspár has been a research fellow at KRTK-KTI since 2021. He obtained his PhD from Central European University in 2019, after which he was a researcher at the Department of Economics at the University of Padua. His research focuses on applied microeconomics, with a particular interest in the relationship between institutions, inequality, and human decisions, whether made as consumers or voters. His main publications have appeared in the Journal of Development Economics, the Journal of Economic Inequality, and the Journal of Population Economics. Since 2023, he has been the research leader of the OTKA Young Researchers Excellence Program.
