NES Center for the Study of Diversity and Social Interactions and HSE International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development are happy to invite you to our joint meeting of the Research Seminar on Diversity and Development and HSE Seminar on Political Economy.
Alexander Yarkin (Brown University) will present the paper “Ancestral Shocks and Political Attitudes of Immigrants: Evidence from the European Refugee Crisis”
Registration: till noon of November 16, link to video-conference will be sent up to 5 p.m. (Moscow time).
Abstract:
This paper documents strong ’real time’ spillovers of political attitudes from the countries of origin to 1st and 2nd generation immigrants. Focusing on the European Refugee Crisis in 2015, this paper shows that attitudes towards non-European immigrants, anti-EU integration preferences, and related attitudes of survey respondents dynamically adjust to the attitudes in their countries of origin. These spillover effects are large: a 1-unit increase in the anti-immigrant sentiment in a European country of origin translates into 0.3-0.5 units increase in the anti-immigrant sentiment among people tracing ancestry to that country. Using the data from Google Trends and Facebook, as well as additional surveys, the paper suggests that (i) network homophily, (ii) ethnic identity, and (iii) immigrants’ attention ties to their countries of origin are important mechanisms behind these spillover effects. Currently in process is data collection from the online survey experiment, which will allow disentangling competing mechanisms.