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Voting with your feet: Political competition and internal migration in the United States

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  • Liu, Wai-Man
  • Ngo, Phong

Abstract

Do people “vote with their feet” in response to a lack of political competition? Since political competition is associated with higher growth and welfare, with the free movement of labour, we argue that it should also encourage inward migration. We test this hypothesis by using data from the US and find a strong positive relation between political competition and net migration. This result is robust to alternative specifications, alternative samples and addressing endogeneity using the Voting Rights Act to instrument for political competition. The effect is economically large, specifically, we find that an increase in political competition in the order of magnitude observed in US Southern states during the post-war period leads to an increase in net migration by between 27 and 44 individuals per 1000 population.

Suggested Citation

  • Liu, Wai-Man & Ngo, Phong, 2020. "Voting with your feet: Political competition and internal migration in the United States," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:poleco:v:65:y:2020:i:c:s0176268020300793
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2020.101931
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    3. Paudel, Nawaraj S. & Lahiri, Sajal, 2024. "Heterogeneity in the Effect of Size on Internal Migration in the United States: A Gravity Model and PPML Estimator Approach," EconStor Preprints 300726, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Political competition; Internal migration; Welfare; Voting rights act;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
    • H70 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - General
    • N92 - Economic History - - Regional and Urban History - - - U.S.; Canada: 1913-

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