Immigration and Crimes against Natives: The 2015 Refugee Crisis in Germany

Yue Huang () and Michael Kvasnicka
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Yue Huang: University of Trier

No 12469, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: In the 2015 refugee crisis, nearly one million refugees came to Germany, raising concern that crimes against natives would rise. Using novel county-level data, we study this question empirically in first-difference and 2SLS regressions. Our results do not support the view that Germans were victimized in greater numbers by refugees as measured by their rate of victimization in crimes with refugee suspects. Our findings are of great policy and public interest, and also of material relevance for the broader literature on immigration and crime which considers only crimes per capita or variants thereof, but never actual crimes by foreigners against natives. We show that this shortcoming can lead to biased inference.

Keywords: immigration; refugees; crimes; crimes against natives (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J15 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2019-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law, nep-mig and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

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