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IZA Discussion Paper No. 18446
March 2026
Anticipating State Action: Risk Perceptions and Consumption under Immigration Enforcement
Alberto Ciancio, Camilo Garcia-Jimeno

Immigration enforcement affects millions who make daily economic decisions under uncertainty about state action. Using data from 2014 to 2018, we combine daily transaction data with arrest-level ICE records to study how households learn and respond to enforcement risk. Enforcement follows predictable weekday patterns, and communities have learned them: consumption is depressed not only on days when enforcement occurs, but also on the same weekday of other weeks—when no enforcement occurs—and rebounds in between, indicating that behavior tracks beliefs, not just realized enforcement. Instrumenting for beliefs using this learnable structure, we find that a 10 percentage point increase in perceived enforcement probability reduces Hispanic foreign-born consumption by about 5 percent. A structural model with Bayesian learning and pent-up demand reveals that roughly half of the immediate consumption decline is recovered through rebound; the rest is permanently foregone. Eliminating enforcement risk would increase Hispanic foreign-born consumption by 3.6 percent, but only 42 percent of these gains materialize within the first year—the remaining losses reflect learning frictions: even after enforcement ceases, beliefs must still adjust.

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Mark Fallak
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Olga Nottmeyer
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+352 585-855-501
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Christina Gathmann
christina.gathmann@liser.lu

Das IZA@LISER-Netzwerk ist eine weltweite Gemeinschaft für exzellente Forschung in der Arbeitsmarktökonomie und angrenzenden Fachgebieten. Nach dem Wechsel von Bonn wird das Netzwerk nun am Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) koordiniert.

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