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- Title
The deterrent effect of an anti-minaret vote on foreigners' location choices.
- Authors
Slotwinski, Michaela; Stutzer, Alois
- Abstract
In a national ballot in 2009, Swiss citizens surprisingly approved an amendment to the Swiss constitution to ban the further construction of minarets. The ballot outcome manifested reservations and anti-immigrant attitudes in regions of Switzerland which had previously been hidden. We exploit this fact as a natural experiment to identify the causal effect of negative attitudes towards immigrants on foreigners' location choices and thus indirectly on their utility. Based on a regression discontinuity design with unknown discontinuity points and administrative data on the population of foreigners, we find that the probability of their moving to a municipality which unexpectedly expressed stronger reservations decreases initially by about 40%. The effect is accompanied by a drop of housing prices in these municipalities and levels off over a period of about 5 months. Moreover, foreigners in high-skill occupations react relatively more strongly highlighting a tension when countries try to attract well-educated professionals from abroad.
- Subjects
IMMIGRATION opponents; SOCIAL conditions of immigrants; IMMIGRANTS -- Housing; HOME prices; REGRESSION discontinuity design; MINARETS
- Publication
Journal of Population Economics, 2019, Vol 32, Issue 3, p1043
- ISSN
0933-1433
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s00148-019-00729-6