The Effect of Far Right Parties on the Location Choice of Immigrants: Evidence from Lega Nord Mayors

Emanuele Bracco, Maria De Paola (), Colin Green () and Vincenzo Scoppa ()

No 10604, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Immigration has increasingly taken centre-stage in the political landscape. Part of this has been rise in far-right, anti-immigration parties in a range of countries. Existing evidence suggests that the presence of immigrants has a substantial effect on the political views of the electorate, generating an advantage to these parties with anti-immigration or nationalist platforms. This paper explores a closely related but overlooked issue: how immigrant behavior is influenced by these parties. We focus on immigrant location decisions in Northern Italy which has seen the rise of the anti-immigration party Lega Nord. We construct a dataset of mayoral elections in Italy for the years 2002-2014, and calculate the effect of electing a mayor belonging to, or supported by Lega Nord. To identify this relationship we focus on mayors who have been elected with narrow margins of victory in a Regression Discontinuity framework. The election of Lega Nord mayor discourages immigrants from moving into the municipality.

Keywords: geographical mobility; political economy; regression discontinuity design; voting behavior; immigration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 J15 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2017-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-mig, nep-pol, nep-soc and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Published - published in: Journal of Public Economics, 2018, 166, 12-26.

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Related works:
Journal Article: The effect of far right parties on the location choice of immigrants: Evidence from Lega Nord Mayors (2018)
Working Paper: THE EFFECT OF FAR RIGHT PARTIES ON THE LOCATION CHOICE OF IMMIGRANTS: EVIDENCE FROM LEGA NORD MAYORS (2017)
Working Paper: The Effect of Far Right Parties on the Location Choice of Immigrants: Evidence from Lega Nord Mayors (2017)
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