Digging Up Trenches: Populism, Selective Mobility, and the Political Polarization of Italian Municipalities

Luca Bellodi, Docquier, Frédéric, Stefano Iandolo, Massimo Morelli and Riccardo Turati

No 18778, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: We study the effect of local exposure to populism on net population movements by citizenship status, gender, age and education level in the context of Italian municipalities. We present two research designs to estimate the causal effect of populist attitudes and politics. Initially, we use a combination of collective memory and trigger variables as an instrument for the variation in populist vote shares across national elections. Subsequently, we apply a regression discontinuity design to estimate the effect of electing a populist mayor on population movements. We establish three converging findings. First, the exposure to both populist attitudes and policies, as manifested by the vote share of populist parties in national election or the close-election of a new populist mayor, reduces the attractiveness of municipalities, leading to larger population outflows. Second, the effect is particularly pronounced among young, female, and highly educated natives, who tend to relocate across Italian municipalities rather than internationally. Third, we do not find any effect on the foreign population. Our results highlight a foot-voting mechanism that may contribute to a political polarization in Italian municipalities.

Keywords: Migration; Human capital; Populism; Italian politics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 F22 F52 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP18778 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Working Paper: Digging Up Trenches: Populism, Selective Mobility, and the Political Polarization of Italian Municipalities (2024)
Working Paper: Digging up Trenches: Populism, Selective Mobility, and the Political Polarization of Italian Municipalities (2024)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:18778

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP18778

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().