Dear colleagues, The Department of Economics cordially invites you to the WU Economics Research Seminar on Wednesday, November 6th, with Francesco Ferlenga (University of Warwick) on "Immigrant Enfranchisement and Integration: Evidence from Italy" Abstract: We study the consequences of immigrant enfranchisement by exploiting Romania's accession to the EU in 2007, which granted municipal election voting rights to Romanian immigrants in Italy. We conduct an event-study analysis at the municipality-by-year level and reach three key findings. First, we find that the enfranchisement of Romanian immigrants leads to an increase in the likelihood of electing a Romanian-born councilor in municipal elections, with higher increases for municipalities expecting a competitive election. Using an instrumented difference-in-differences approach, we find the increase in representation is driven by enfranchisement of the preexisting population and not by new Romanian arrivals following the accession. Second, we find that social capital among Romanian immigrants increases after 2007, indicating that the effect of enfranchisement extends beyond political representation to integration. However, despite the increase in representation and social capital, we find that immigrant presence increases the likelihood of a right-leaning party victory, raises municipal spending on public security, and lowers spending on social programs. This suggests that natives' backlash against immigrant presence plays a bigger role in determining the winning party than the existence of a newly enfranchised immigrant community. Date: Wednesday, November 6th Time: 4.30 to 6 pm (CET) Location: building D1, first floor, room D1.1.078<https://campus.wu.ac.at/?q=D1.1.078> With best regards, Harald Oberhofer --- Univ.-Prof. Dr. Harald Oberhofer Department of Economics WU Vienna University of Economics and Business Phone: +43/1/31336-4984 Email: harald.oberhofer@wu.ac.at<mailto:harald.oberhofer@wu.ac.at> https://www.wu.ac.at/en/economics/people/oberhofer-h Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO) Phone: +43/1/7982601-468 Email: harald.oberhofer@wifo.ac.at<mailto:harald.oberhofer@wifo.ac.at> http://www.wifo.ac.at/harald_oberhofer