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An important concern about the surge in the number of refugees arriving in Europe is increased support for far-right, nationalist, anti-immigration parties. This paper studies a natural experiment in an Austrian federal state to identify the causal effect of exposure to refugees in the neighborhood on the support for the far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ). In the Upper Austria state election in September 2015 the FPÖ doubled its vote share with a fierce anti-asylum campaign. Since only 42 percent of Upper Austrian communities hosted refugees at the time of the election, direct exposure to refugees varied at the local level. To account for the potential endogeneity in the distribution of refugees, I use pre-existing group accommodations as instrumental variable. To cope with the sudden inflow of large numbers of refugees, these buildings were used for refugee accommodation and thus strongly increase the probability of refugee presence in the community. In line with the contact hypothesis I find that hosting refugees in the community dampens the positive overall trend and decreases FPÖ support by 4.42 percentage points in state elections. Further analysis using exit poll data reveals a positive effect on the optimism in the population that the integration of refugees can be managed. Placebo tests show that there were no effects in elections prior to 2015.

The massive increase in the number of arriving refugees in Europe in 2015 creates enormous economic and political challenges in the receiving countries. An important concern is that the inflow of refugees increases the support for far-right, nationalist, anti-immigration parties. This paper studies a natural experiment in an Austrian state to identify the causal effect of exposure to refugees in the neighborhood on the support for the far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ). Before the local and state elections in September 2015 the inflow of refugees dominated the entire pre-electoral discussion and the FPÖ - with a fierce anti-asylum campaign - doubled its vote share in this election. At the time of the election, 42 percent of Upper Austrian communities hosted refugees, which provides variation in the exposure to refugees at the community level. To account for the potential endogeneity in the distribution of refugees, I use the availability of existing group accommodations as instrumental variable. To cope with the sudden inflow of large number of refugees, these buildings were used as accommodation and their existence strongly increases the probability of refugee presence. In line with the contact hypothesis I find that hosting refugees in the community decreases the support for the FPÖ by 4.42 percentage points in state elections and increases the optimism in the population that the integration of refugees can be managed. The effects are robust to a series of sensitivity and placebo checks.

This paper studies a natural experiment to identify the causal effect of exposure to refugees in the neighborhood on the support for far-right, nationalist, anti-immigration parties. In the state elections in an Austrian state in September 2015 the far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPOE) doubled its vote share with a fierce anti-asylum campaign. Since only 42 percent of communities hosted refugees at the time of the election, exposure to refugees varied at the local level. To account for the potential endogeneity in the distribution of refugees, I use pre-existing group accommodations as instrumental variable. To cope with the sudden inflow of large numbers of refugees, these buildings were used to accommodate refugees and thus strongly increase the probability of refugee presence in a community. In line with the contact hypothesis I find that hosting refugees dampens the overall trend and decreases FPOE support by 4.42 percentage points. Further analysis using exit poll data reveals a positive effect on the optimism in the population that the integration of refugees can be managed. Placebo tests show that there were no effects in elections prior to 2015.

Ziel dieser Dissertation ist es, die Ursachen und Konsequenzen von menschlichem Verhalten mittels empirischer Forschungsmethoden zu untersuchen. Obwohl die einzelnen Kapitel sehr unterschiedliche Themen behandeln, verbindet sie das Ziel, einen kausalen Mechanismus zu identifizieren oder entsprechende Methoden für andere empirische Arbeiten zu entwickeln bzw. bestehende Methoden zu verbessern. Das erste Kapitel untersucht ob sportliche Aktivität von Kindern ihre kognitiven und nicht-kognitiven Fähigkeiten beeinflusst. Dieses Kapitel basiert auf zwei Datensätzen zu Kindern in Deutschland und verwendet semi-parametrische Schätzmethoden, um für die Selbstselektion in sportliche Aktivität zu kontrollieren. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass sportliche Aktivität die schulische Leistung und das Gruppenverhalten verbessert. Das zweite Kapitel untersucht die Sensitivität eines Radiusmatching Schätzers in Bezug auf verschiedene Tuningparameter mittels einer empirischen Monte Carlo Simulation. Die Ergebnisse dieser Studie helfen Anwendern die passenden Werte für die einzelnen Parameter zu wählen. Im Rahmen dieses Papers wurde der Schätzer für die Softwarepakete GAUSS, STATA und R implementiert. Das dritte Kapitel untersucht den Effekt von Emigration auf das Wahlverhalten von im Ursprungsland verbleibenden Haushaltsmitgliedern. Die dahinter liegende Hypothese ist, dass Migranten in den Zielländern über die dortigen politischen Institutionen lernen und dieses Wissen an im Ursprungsland verbleibende Angehörige weitergeben. Diese Studie basiert auf administrativen und Umfragedaten der ehemaligen Sowjetrepublik Moldawien. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Migration eines Individuums nach Westeuropa dazu führt, dass die zurückbleibenden Haushaltsmitglieder eher liberale, pro-westliche Parteien wählen. Migration nach Russland hat keinen derartigen Effekt. Das vierte Kapitel beschäftigt sich mit der Identifikation des kausalen Effekts der Migration eines Individuums auf die zurückbleibenden Haushaltsmitglieder. Die Schwierigkeit für die Identifikation dieses Effekts ist die gleichzeitige Existenz von mehreren Selektionsproblemen ...