Research

_{Abstract: Does immigration affect beliefs and concerns about crime? We answer this question in the context of Chile, where the foreign-born population almost tripled in five years. To identify a causal effect, we use two strategies: a two-way fixed effects model at the municipality-year level and a 2SLS model, based on a shift-share type of instrument. First, we show that immigration increases concerns and perceptions about crime and public security. We then document a substantial effect on behavioral responses such as investing in home security or adopting coordinated anti-crime measures with neighbors. Finally, we show that these concerns about crime seem ungrounded as we fail to find any significant effect on victimization. When exploring potential channels that could explain the widening in the crime-perceptions gap, we find suggestive evidence of the effect being driven by municipalities with a higher presence of local media (such as local radio stations). In addition, the effect seems to be larger when immigrants are predominantly low-skilled. Finally, using an index of bilateral ethnic distance, we show that the genetic distance between Chile and the nationality of immigrants does not seem to be driven the effects, ruling out the effect being driven by the intergroup threat.}

Link: WP

_{Abstract: How do political leader’s words and actions affect people’s behavior? We address this question in the context of Brazil by combining electoral information and geo-localized mobile phone data for more than 60 million devices throughout the entire country. We find that after Brazil’s president publicly and emphatically dismissed the risks associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and advised against isolation, the social distancing measures taken by citizens in pro-government localities weakened compared to places where political support of the president is less strong, while pre-event effects are insignificant. The impact is large and robust to different empirical model specifications and definitions of political support and events. Moreover, we find suggestive evidence that this impact is driven by localities with relatively higher levels of media penetration, municipalities with the presence of active Twitter accounts, and municipalities with a larger proportion of Evangelic parishioners, a key group in terms of support for the president.}

Link: IZA WP

_{Abstract: Inequality in access to high-quality teachers is an important driver of student socioeconomic achievement gaps. We experimentally evaluate a novel nation-wide low-cost government program aimed at reducing teacher sorting. Specifically, we tested two behavioral strategies designed to induce teachers to apply to job vacancies in disadvantaged schools. These strategies consisted of an “Altruistic Identity” treatment arm, which primed teachers’ altruistic identity by making it more salient, and an “Extrinsic Incentives” arm, which simplified the information and increased the salience of an existing government monetary-incentive scheme rewarding teachers who work in underprivileged institutions. We show that both strategies are successful in triggering teacher candidates to apply to such vacancies, as well as making them more likely to be assigned to a final in-person evaluation in a disadvantaged school. The effect among high-performing teachers is larger, especially in the “Altruistic” arm. Our results imply that low-cost behavioral strategies can enhance the supply and quality of professionals willing to teach in high-need areas.}

Link: IZA WP

_{Abstract: Using large-scale survey data covering more than 110 countries and exploiting within-country variation across cohorts and surveys, we show that individuals with longer exposure to democracy display stronger support for democratic institutions. We bolster these baseline findings using an instrumental-variables strategy exploiting regional democratization waves and focusing on immigrants’ exposure to democracy before migration. In all cases, the timing and nature of the effects are consistent with a causal interpretation. We also establish that democracies breed their own support only when they are successful: all of the effects we estimate work through exposure to democracies that are successful in providing economic growth, peace and political stability, and public goods.}

Link: WP

_{Abstract: Order effects have been found to influence choice in low-stakes decisions. In this paper, we show that they also operate in the context of high-stakes, real-world decisions: career choices. We experimentally evaluate a nationwide program in Ecuador that changed the order of teaching vacancies in a job application platform in order to reduce teacher sorting. In the treatment arm, the platform showed hard-to-staff schools first, while in the control group, teaching vacancies were displayed in alphabetical order. In both arms,hard-to-staff schools were labeled with an icon and the information provided to teachers was identical. We found that a teacher in the treatment arm was more likely to apply to hard-to-staff schools, rank them in their highest priority, and be assigned to a job vacancy in one of these schools. The effects were not driven by inattentive, altruistic, or less qualified teachers. The results contributed to reducing the unequal distribution of qualified teachers across schools with different socioeconomic backgrounds}

Link: IZA WP

_{Abstract: Does exposure to temporary mass migration affect the economic behavior of natives? In order to answer this question, we use a unique locality-level panel from the 2010 and 2016 rounds of the Life in Transition Survey and data on the main land routes taken by migrants in 18 European countries during the refugee crisis in 2015. To capture the exogenous variation in natives’ exposure to transit migration, we construct an instrument that is based on the distance of each locality to the optimal routes that minimize travelling time between the main origin and destination cities. We first show that the entrepreneurial activity of natives falls considerably in localities that are more exposed to mass transit migration, compared to those located further away. We then explore suggestive mechanisms and find results consistent with the view that the effect is driven by a change in risk attitudes, a decline in institutional trust and in the perceived political stability and an increase in the sense of lack of law and order. We also document an increase in the anti-migrant sentiment while attitudes towards other minorities remained unchanged. We rule out the possibility of out-migration of natives or of trade-related shocks (potentially confounded with the mass-transit migration) affecting our results.}

Link: IZA WP

_{Abstract: Using micro-geographic units of analysis, the paper finds, first, that crime in Latin America is highly concentrated in a small proportion of blocks: 50 percent of crimes are concentrated in 3 to 7.5 percent of street segments, and 25 percent of crimes are concentrated in 0.5 to 2.9 percent of street segments. This validates Weisburd’s “law of crime concentration at place”. These figures are fairly constant over time but sensitive to major police reforms. The second finding is that hot spots of crime are not always persistent. Crime is constantly prevalent in certain areas, but in other areas hot spots either appear or disappear, suggesting a possible rational adaptation from criminals to police actions that cause crime displacement in the medium run to other areas.}

Link: IDB WP