We study whether the arrival of a new immigrant wave changes natives’ acceptance of former immigrants and their descendants. We exploit the 2015 European refugee crisis and the context of German open-list local council elections where voting for immigrant-origin candidates represents a consequential revealed preference.
- Speaker
- Date
- Friday 21 Feb 2025, 12:00 - 13:15
- Type
- Seminar
- Room
- 3-14
- Building
- Polak Building
(joint with Sebastian Schirner)
We combine hand-collected candidate-level election data with administrative asylum seeker data. Continuous difference-in-differences estimations (based on municipal %∆ in asylum seekers) reveal that immigrant-origin candidates receive more votes the more asylum seekers arrived locally. This shift in social group boundaries is driven by candidates with a Southern/Eastern European origin being culturally similar to Germans.
About the Speaker
Zohal is a Professor for Social Policy & Public Economics at the Ruhr University Bochum, a CESifo Munich Affiliate and an IZA Bonn Research Fellow. She served as President of the European Public Choice Society (2022-24). She studies political selection, voting behaviour, policy choices and public finances, electoral systems and accountability as well as economic and social/political consequences of migration.
Her research has been widely published in journals such as the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Review of Economics and Statistics, European Economic Review, Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organisation.
Registration
If you are interested in booking a bilateral on Friday morning, please send an email to boring@ese.eur.nl.
