Do Anti-Immigration Attitudes Discourage Immigration? Evidence from a New Instrument

Etienne Bacher (), Michel Beine () and Hillel Rapoport ()
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Etienne Bacher: Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER)
Michel Beine: University of Luxembourg

No 18192, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We investigate the effect of anti-immigration attitudes on immigration plans to Europe. We propose a new instrument for attitudes toward immigration, namely, the number of country nationals killed in terrorist attacks taking place outside of Europe. Our first-stage results confirm that such terrorist attacks increase negative attitudes to immigration in the origin country of the victims. Our second-stage results then show that this higher hostility toward migrants decreases the attractiveness of the country for prospective immigrants.

Keywords: anti-immigration attitudes; terrorism; immigration; Europe (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C1 F2 J1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab, nep-ltv and nep-ure
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Working Paper: Do Anti-immigration Attitudes Discourage Immigration? Evidence from a New Instrument (2025)
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