The deterrent effect of an anti-minaret vote on foreigners' location choices

Arbeitspapier

In a national ballot in 2009, Swiss citizens surprisingly approved an amendment to the Swiss constitution to ban the further construction of minarets. The ballot outcome manifested reservations and anti-immigrant attitudes in regions of Switzerland which had previously been hidden. We exploit this fact as a natural experiment to identify the causal effect of negative attitudes towards immigrants on foreigners' location choices and thus indirectly on their utility. Based on a regression discontinuity design with unknown discontinuity points and administrative data on the population of foreigners, we find that the probability of their moving to a municipality which unexpectedly expressed stronger reservations decreases initially by about 40 percent. The effect is accompanied by a drop of housing prices in these municipalities and levels off over a period of about 5 months. Moreover, foreigners in high-skill occupations react relatively more strongly highlighting a tension when countries try to attract well-educated professionals from abroad.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: WWZ Working Paper ; No. 2018/28

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness ; Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers ; Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics: Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population; Neighborhood Characteristics ; Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification
• Subject: attitudes ; foreigners ; location choice ; popular initiative ; regression discontinuity design

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Slotwinski, Michaela ; Stutzer, Alois
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): University of Basel, Center of Business and Economics (WWZ)
• (where): Basel
• (when): 2019

Further information

• DOI: doi:10.5451/unibas-ep69122
• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/207092
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET