A new paper published in the Journal of Population Economics finds that immigration indeed decreases far-right votes in Finland and provides an explanation.
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Does immigration decrease far-right popularity? Evidence from Finnish municipalities
Jakub Lonsky Download PDF View Article
This is GLO Discussion Paper No. 540, 2020.
OPEN ACCESS – Published Online. Forthcoming in print version: Journal of Population Economics (2021), volume 34.
Author Abstract: Across Europe, far-right parties have made significant electoral gains in recent years. Their anti-immigration stance is considered one of the main factors behind their success. Using data from Finland, this paper studies the effect of immigration on voting for the far-right Finns Party on a local level. Exploiting a convenient setup for a shift-share instrument, I find that a 1 percentage point increase in the share of foreign citizens in a municipality decreases the Finns Party’s vote share by 3.4 percentage points. Placebo tests using pre-period data confirm this effect is not driven by persistent trends at the municipality level. The far-right votes lost to immigration are captured by the two pro-immigration parties. Turning to potential mechanisms, immigration is found to increase voter turnout, potentially activating local pro-immigration voters. Moreover, the negative effect is only present in municipalities with high initial exposure to immigrants, consistent with the intergroup contact theory. Finally, I also provide some evidence for the welfare-state channel as a plausible mechanism behind the main result.
Access to the just published complete Volume 33, Issue 4, October 2020.
LEAD ARTICLE OF ISSUE 4:
Impacts of social and economic factors on the transmission of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in China
Yun Qiu, Xi Chen, Wei Shi
Pages 1127-1172 Download PDF View Article
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Newly available:
IMPACT FACTOR 1.840 (2019) from 1.253 (2018)
5-YEAR IF 2.353 (2019) from 2.072 (2018)
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