TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Bracco, Emanuele
AU  - Paola, Maria De
AU  - Green, Colin P.
AU  - Scoppa, Vincenzo
        TI  - The Effect of Far Right Parties on the Location Choice of Immigrants: Evidence from Lega Nord Mayors
        PY  - 2017/Mar/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 10604
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp10604
        AB  - Immigration has increasingly taken centre-stage in the political landscape. Part of this has been rise in far-right, anti-immigration parties in a range of countries. Existing evidence suggests that the presence of immigrants has a substantial effect on the political views of the electorate, generating an advantage to these parties with anti-immigration or nationalist platforms. This paper explores a closely related but overlooked issue: how immigrant behavior is influenced by these parties.
We focus on immigrant location decisions in Northern Italy which has seen the rise of the anti-immigration party Lega Nord. We construct a dataset of mayoral elections in Italy for the years 2002-2014, and calculate the effect of electing a mayor belonging to, or supported by Lega Nord. To identify this relationship we focus on mayors who have been elected with narrow margins of victory in a Regression Discontinuity framework. The election of Lega Nord mayor discourages immigrants from moving into the municipality.
        KW  - geographical mobility
KW  - political economy
KW  - regression discontinuity design
KW  - voting behavior
KW  - immigration
        ER  -