Senaste numret av Kyklos innehåller flera särskilt intressanta artiklar. Här är en vars resultat inte är särskilt upplyftande för den så kallade kontakthypotesen:
Brunner, Beatrice, and Andreas Kuhn. 2018. "Immigration, Cultural Distance and Natives’ Attitudes Towards Immigrants: Evidence from Swiss Voting Results." Kyklos 71(1): 28–58.
Det viktigaste ur abstract:
- combine community-level outcomes of 27 votes about immigration issues in Switzerland with census data to estimate the effect of immigration on natives' attitudes towards immigrants.
- categorize immigrants into two groups according to the cultural values and beliefs of their country of origin
- find that the share of culturally different immigrants is a significant and sizable determinant of anti-immigration votes, while the presence of culturally similar immigrants does not affect natives' voting behavior at all
- the share of right-wing votes in favor of the Swiss People's Party appears to be more elastic with respect to the share of culturally different immigrants than natives' attitudes themselves, suggesting that the party has gained a disproportionate vote share from attitudinal changes caused by immigrant inflows.
En annan artikel i Kyklos ger ytterligare stöd för en av mina mest citerade artiklar (tillsammans med Christian Bjørnskov, lustigt nog också den i Kyklos)
Camussi, Silvia, Anna Laura Mancini, and Pietro Tommasino. 2018. "Does Trust Influence Social Expenditures? Evidence from Local Governments." Kyklos 71(1): 59–85.
Hela abstract:
We document that trust has a positive impact on the generosity of welfare spending. Our analysis relies on a unique dataset including detailed budgetary data of more than 2,000 Italian municipalities. Compared with previous contributions based on cross-country data, our approach reduces the risk of omitted variable bias and measurement errors. Furthermore, drawing on Italy's rich political history, we are able to use an instrumental variables strategy that addresses the possible endogeneity of trust.