Diversity and Public Goods: A Natural Experiment with Exogenous Residential Allocation

This paper demonstrates the effects of ethnic and religious diversity on the quality of public spaces. Its identification strategy relies on the exogeneity of public housing allocations in France, and thereby eliminates the bias from endogenous sorting. The paper uses micro evidence of social interactions within housing blocks from the representative French Housing survey, which allows for a detailed identification of the channels through which diversity operates. Differentiating among three channels of public goods provision, the paper finds that heterogeneity in the housing block leads to low levels of sanctions for anti-social behavior and low levels of collective action to improve housing conditions, but no losses in public safety.fractionalization, public goods, collective action, discrimination

"One Muslim is Enough!" - Evidence from a Field Experiment in France

Anti-Muslim prejudice is widespread in Western countries. Yet, Muslims are expected to constitute a growing share of the total population in Western countries over the next decades. This paper predicts that this demographic trend will increase anti-Muslim prejudice. Relying on experimental games and a formal model, we show that the generosity of rooted French toward Muslims is significantly decreased with the increase of Muslims in their midst, and demonstrate that these results are driven by the activation of rooted French taste-based discrimination against Muslims when Muslim numbers increase. Our findings call for solutions to anti-Muslim prejudice in the West.discrimination, Islam, France, group salience, experimental economics, economic theory, group threat theory, intergroup contact theory

Identifying barriers to Muslim integration in France

Is there a Muslim disadvantage in economic integration for secondgeneration immigrants to Europe? Previous research has failed to isolate the effect that religion may have on an immigrant family's labor market opportunities because other factors, such as country of origin or race, confound the result. This paper uses a correspondence test in the French labor market to identify and measure this religious effect. The results confirm that in the French labor market, antiMuslim discrimination exists: a Muslim candidate is 2.5 times less likely to receive a job interview callback than is his or her Christian counterpart. A high-n survey reveals, consistent with expectations from the correspondence test, that second-generation Muslim households in France have lower income compared with matched Christian households. The paper thereby contributes to both substantive debates on the Muslim experience in Europe and methodological debates on how to measure discrimination. Following the National Academy of Sciences' 2001 recommendations on combining a variety of methodologies and applying them to real-world situations, this research identifies, measures, and infers consequences of discrimination based on religious affiliation, controlling for potentially confounding factors, such as race and country of origin.Muslim immigrants ; Integration ; France

Somalia: Intervention in Internal Conflict

Case Study Prepared for Intervention in Internal ConflictMassive international efforts beginning in 1992 to ameliorate the devastating effects of the Somali civil war and to reconstitute a functioning government in that country brought some notable achievements but they were overshadowed bygrievous failures. This paper in section I provides background information on the Somali conflict that precipitated the international intervention. In section II, it delineates the special problems for military intervention in the current era in civil wars like Somalia"s. In sections III-V, it develops three points, listed here, that have implications for future international interventions in civil wars. * Early decisive diplomatic attention to the Somali crisis, backed by fiscal and military threats, probably could have nipped the civil war in its bud, averting the catastrophe that followed.* The goals of the humanitarian relief mission, while impressively fulfilled, undermined the chances for a political settlement, and therefore set the stage for an ignominious exit by the international gendarmerie.* The strategic situation in the United Nations Security Council, between the leading permanent missions (the P-5) and the Secretary General (SG) creates a bias towards ambitious goals combined with paltry resources. The UN"s Somali operations reflected that unfortunate bias. In section VI, an evaluation of the international effort in Somalia is offere

Women, Muslim immigrants, and economic integration in France

Muslim immigrants to Europe display distinctive attitudes toward women in a wide range of survey data. This study investigates whether this translates into distinctive behavior. Relying on a dictator game in France and an identification strategy that isolates the effect of religion from typical confounds such as race, we compare the donations of matched Christian and Muslim immigrants and rooted French to in-group and out-group men vs. women. Our results indicate that Muslim immigrant participants deviate from Christian immigrant and rooted French partici pants in their behavior toward women: while the latter favor women over men, Muslim immigrants favor men over women

Muslims in France: identifying a discriminatory equilibrium

We analyze the assimilation patterns of Muslim immigrants in Western countries with a unique identification strategy. Survey and experimental data collected in France in 2009 suggest that Muslims and rooted French are locked in a sub-optimal equilib- rium whereby (i) rooted French exhibit taste-based discrimination against those they are able to identify as Muslims and (ii) Muslims perceive French institutions as system- atically discriminatory against them. This equilibrium is sustained because Muslims, perceiving discrimination as institutionalized, are reluctant to assimilate and rooted French, who are able to identify Muslims as such due to their lower assimilation, reveal their distaste for Muslims