The Brexit referendum and the rise in hate crime; conforming to the new norm

Facundo Albornoz, Jake Bradley and Silvia Sonderegger

No 2020-06, Discussion Papers from Nottingham Interdisciplinary Centre for Economic and Political Research (NICEP)

Abstract: We show that the sharp increase in hate crime following the Brexit referendum was more pronounced in more pro-remain areas. This is consistent with a model where behavior is dictated by the desire to conform to imperfectly observed social norms in addition to following individual preferences, and where the referendum revealed that society’s real preferences over immigration were less positive than previously thought. For identification, we exploit the feature that the referendum revealed new information overnight in a context where other determinants of attitudes remained constant. The data can be replicated with a sensible parameterization of the model.

Keywords: Hate crime; Brexit; attitudes towards immigrants; social norms; value of information (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int and nep-soc
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Working Paper: The Brexit referendum and the rise in hate crime; conforming to the new norm (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:not:notnic:2020-06

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