Far-right and far-left parties by definition occupy the fringes of politics, with policy proposals outside the mainstream. This paper asks how public attitudes about such policies respond once an extreme party increases their political representation at the local level. We study attitudes towards the signature policies of two radical populist parties in Sweden, one from the right and one from the left, using panel data from 290 municipal election districts. To identify causal effects, we take advantage of large nonlinearities in the function which assigns council seats, comparing otherwise similar elections where a party either barely wins or loses an additional seat. We estimate that a one seat increase for the far-right, anti-immigration party decreases negative attitudes towards immigration by 4.1 percentage points, in opposition to the party’s policy position. Likewise, when a far-left, anti-capitalist party politician gets elected, support for a six hour workday falls by 2.7 percentage points. Mirroring these attitudinal changes, the far-right and far-left parties have no incumbency advantage in the next election. Exploring possible mechanisms, we find evidence that when the anti-immigrant party wins a marginal seat, they experience higher levels of politician turnover before the next election and receive negative coverage in local newspapers. These findings demonstrate that political representation can cause an attitudinal backlash as fringe parties and their ideas are placed under closer scrutiny.

We examine whether exposure of men to women in a traditionally male-dominated environment can change attitudes about mixed-gender productivity, gender roles and gender identity. Our context is the military in Norway, where we randomly assigned female recruits to some squads but not others during boot camp. We find that living and working with women for 8 weeks causes men to adopt more egalitarian attitudes. There is a 14 percentage point increase in the fraction of men who think mixed-gender teams perform as well or better than same-gender teams, an 8 percentage point increase in men who think household work should be shared equally and a 14 percentage point increase in men who do not completely disavow feminine traits. Contrary to the predictions of many policymakers, we find no evidence that integrating women into squads hurt male recruits’ satisfaction with boot camp or their plans to continue in the military. These findings provide evidence that even in a highly gender-skewed environment, gender stereotypes are malleable and can be altered by integrating members of the opposite sex.

Several studies using observational data suggest that ethnic discrimination increases in downturns of the economy. We investigate whether ethnic discrimination depends on labour market tightness using data from correspondence studies. We utilize three correspondence studies of the Swedish labour market and two different measures of labour market tightness. These two measures produce qualitatively similar results, and, opposite to the observational studies, suggest that ethnic discrimination in hiring decreases in downturns of the economy.

We conduct a survey of newly hired workers in the Swedish labour market to analyse if there are differences between natives and immigrants in the choice of search intensity/methods and in the search method getting the job. We further investigate if the wage and other characteristics of the new job differ depending on the successful search method. We find that immigrants use all search methods more than natives, but they especially rely on informal search. Immigrants are more likely than natives to find a job using informal search through friends and relatives, and these jobs are associated with lower wages.

Purpose

We investigate whether there is unequal treatment in hiring depending on whether a job applicant signals living in a bad (deprived) neighborhood or in a good (affluent) neighborhood.

Design/methodology/approach

We conducted a field experiment where fictitious job applications were sent to employers with an advertised vacancy. Each job application was randomly assigned a residential address in either a bad or a good neighborhood. The measured outcome is the fraction of invitations for a job interview (the callback rate).

Findings

We find no evidence of general neighborhood signaling effects. However, job applicants with a foreign background have callback rates that are 42 percent lower if they signal living in a bad neighborhood rather than in a good neighborhood. In addition, we find that applicants with commuting times longer than 90 minutes have lower callback rates, and this is unrelated to the neighborhood signaling effect.

Originality/value

Empirical evidence of causal neighborhood effects on labor market outcomes is scant, and causal evidence on the mechanisms involved is even more scant. We provide such evidence.

The question of whether and how living in a deprived neighborhood affects the labormarket outcomes of its residents has been a subject of great interest for both policy makers andresearchers. Despite this interest, empirical evidence of causal neighborhood effects on labormarket outcomes is scant, and causal evidence on the mechanisms involved is even more scant.The mechanism that this study investigates is neighborhood signaling effects. Specifically, weask whether there is unequal treatment in hiring depending on whether a job applicant signalsliving in a bad (deprived) neighborhood or in a good (affluent) neighborhood. To this end, weconducted a field experiment where fictitious job applications were sent to employers with anadvertised vacancy. Each job application was randomly assigned a residential address in either abad or a good neighborhood. The measured outcome is the fraction of invitations for a jobinterview (the callback rate). We find no evidence of general neighborhood signaling effects.However, job applicants with a foreign background have callback rates that are 42 percent lowerif they signal living in a bad neighborhood rather than in a good neighborhood. In addition, wefind that applicants with commuting times longer than 90 minutes have lower callback rates, andthis is unrelated to the neighborhood signaling effect. Apparently, employers view informationabout residential addresses as important for employment decisions.

In most EU countries, ethnic minorities have lower wages than does the ethnic majority. To what extent these wage gaps are the result of prejudice toward ethnic minority workers is virtually unknown. The authors examine the role that prejudice plays in the creation of the ethnic wage gap in one of Europe’s most egalitarian countries, Sweden. The analysis takes into account the important distinction between average employer attitudes and the attitude of the marginal employer (the attitude of the most prejudiced employer hiring the ethnic minority). Results confirm that the attitudes of the marginal employer—but not those of the average employer—are important for explaining the ethnic wage gap.

Health and education are known to be highly correlated, but the mechanisms behind the relationship are not well understood. In particular, there is sparse evidence on whether adolescent health may influence educational attainment. Using a large registry dataset of twins, including comprehensive information on health status at the age of 18 and later educational attainment, we investigate whether health predicts final education within monozygotic (identical) twin pairs. We find no evidence of this and conclude that health in adolescence may not have an influence on the level of schooling. Instead, raw correlations between adolescent health and schooling appear to be driven by genes and twin-pair-specific environmental factors.

Gender stereotypes describe women as communal and men asagentic. Laboratory based research (Rudman & Glick 1999; 2001)suggests that trying to disconfirm such descriptive genderstereotypes (e.g., women self-promoting their agency), entails therisk of hiring discrimination due to violation of prescriptive genderstereotypes: a backlash. To examine whether backlash occurs whenapplying for real jobs, we conducted a field experiment. Gender,agency and communion were manipulated in the personal profile of5,562 applications sent to 3,342 job openings on the Swedish labormarket. The dependent variable was whether the applicationresulted in an invitation to a job interview or not. The results do notoffer any support for the backlash hypothesis at this stage in therecruitment process.

A large theoretical and empirical literature explores whether politicians and political parties change their policy positions in response to voters’ preferences. This paper asks the opposite question: do political parties affect public attitudes on important policy issues? Problems of reverse causality and omitted variable bias make this a difficult question to answer empirically. We study attitudes towards nuclear energy and immigration in Sweden using panel data from 290 municipal election areas. To identify causal effects, we take advantage of large nonlinearities in the function which assigns council seats, comparing otherwise similar elections where one party either barely wins or loses an additional seat. We estimate that a one seat increase for the anti-nuclear party reduces support for nuclear energy in that municipality by 18%. In contrast, when an anti-immigration politician gets elected, negative attitudes towards immigration decrease by 7%, which is opposite the party’s policy position. Consistent with the estimated changes in attitudes, the anti-nuclear party receives more votes in the next election after gaining a seat, while the anti-immigrant party experiences no such incumbency advantage. The rise of the anti-immigration party is recent enough to permit an exploration of possible mechanisms using several ancillary data sources. We find causal evidence that gaining an extra seat draws in lower quality politicians, reduces negotiated refugee quotas, and increases negative newspaper coverage of the anti-immigrant party at the local level. Our finding that politicians can shape public attitudes has important implications for the theory and estimation of how voter preferences enter into electoral and political economy models.