I am a social scientist with a background in political science, economics, and physics. My research investigates how culture and population changes interact with socio-political development. Specific topics include how value change shapes our contemporary world, the effects of population changes on politics, and the cultural evolution of fertility transition.
My work is interdisciplinary and benefits from perspectives of cultural evolution, political economy, and behavioral economics. The main approach is theoretical and statistical computational modeling, which aims to bridge conceptual and empirical research and inspire further data collection, such as surveys or lab experiments.
Broadly, I am also interested in political economy — how political and economic factors interact and affect our society. I study cooperation in multilevel and political settings, particularly the collective action problem within a group when the members face the same out-group competitors. I also examine the relationship between political polarization and wealth inequality in the US context and the dynamics of electoral competition.
I work in the Department of Human Behavior, Ecology and Culture and the BirthRites Lise Meitner Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. I received my Ph.D. in Political Science from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in May 2021.
Feel free to get in touch at yi_ta_lu@eva.mpg.de.