TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Entorf, Horst
AU  - Lange, Martin
        TI  - Refugees Welcome? Understanding the Regional Heterogeneity of Anti-Foreigner Hate Crimes in Germany
        PY  - 2019/Mar/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 12229
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp12229
        AB  - In this article, we examine anti-foreigner hate crime in the wake of the large influx of asylum seekers to Germany in 2014 and 2015. By exploiting the quasi-experimental assignment of asylum seekers to German regions, we estimate the causal effect of an unexpected and sudden change in the share of the foreign-born population on anti-foreigner hate crime. Our county-level analysis shows that not simply the size of regional asylum seeker inflows drives the increase in hate crime, but the rapid compositional change of the residential population:
Areas with previously low shares of foreign-born inhabitants that face large-scale immigration of asylum seekers witness the strongest upsurge in hate crime. Economically deprived regions and regions with a legacy of anti-foreigner hate crimes are also found to be prone to hate crime against refugees. However, when we explicitly control for East-West German differences, the predominance of native-born residents at the local level stands out as the single most important factor explaining the sudden increase in hate crime. 
        KW  - natural experiment
KW  - immigration
KW  - hate crime
KW  - regional conditions
        ER  -