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Marriott Marquis, Grand Ballroom 1
Hosted By:
American Economic Association
Consequences of Forced Migration
Paper Session
Saturday, Jan. 4, 2020 8:00 AM - 10:00 AM (PDT)
- Chair: Panu Poutvaara, University of Munich
Brothers or Invaders? How Crises-Driven Migrants Shape Voting Behaviour
Abstract
What explains voters’ negative attitudes toward immigration? Self-interested voters care about their personal economic and social circumstances. Sociotropic voters display in-group bias and perceive migrants as threats to their customs and culture. We study the electoral effects of forced internal and international migration in Colombia to provide evidence on the relative importance of these two hypotheses. We exploit the fact that migrants disproportionally locate in places with earlier settlements of people from their place of origin. In line with the sociotropic hypothesis, we find that only international migration inflows increase political participation and shift votes from left- to right-wing ideologies. Also consistent with the sociotropic hypothesis, we show that these results are not accounted for by the observed changes caused by migration inflows on socioeconomic variables.Impact of Syrian Refugees on Education Outcomes in Jordan
Abstract
While labor market impacts of refugees and immigrants are studied frequently, outcomes like children's education could also be affected by mass arrivals. This paper examines the impact of Syrian refugees on the educational attainment of Jordanians. Combining detailed household surveys with school-level records on the density of Syrians, we study both quantity and quality of education for the hosts using a differences-in-differences design across refugee prevalence and birth cohort. We find no evidence that greater exposure to Syrian refugees affected the attainment of Jordanians; donor-funded expansion of educational inputs in high-Syrian areas appears sufficient to mitigate potential over-crowding.Exposure to Transit Migration, Public Attitudes, and Entrepreneurship among the Native Population
Abstract
We study the impact of the recent migration crisis on entrepreneurship in 18 European transit countries using a unique locality-level panel from the 2010 and 2016 rounds of the Life in Transition Survey. To capture the exogenous variation in exposure to transit migration, we construct an instrument that exploits the distance of each locality to the optimal routes that minimise travelling time between the main origin and destination countries. We find that the entrepreneurial activity of natives falls considerably in localities that are more exposed to mass migration, compared to those located further away. We explore the mechanisms explaining the decline in entrepreneurial activity; our findings are consistent with the view that this decline is driven by decreased willingness to take risks, lower institutional trust and higher perceived political instability. We also document an increase in the anti-migrant sentiment while attitudes towards other minorities remained unchanged.Discussant(s)
Panu Poutvaara
,
University of Munich
Dany Bahar
,
Brookings Institution
Semih Tumen
,
TED University
Joseph-Simon Görlach
,
Bocconi University
JEL Classifications
- F2 - International Factor Movements and International Business
- O1 - Economic Development