Attitudes towards highly skilled and low‐skilled immigration in Europe: A survey experiment in 15 European countries

To what extent do economic concerns drive anti‐migrant attitudes? Key theoretical arguments extract two central motives: increased labour market competition and the fiscal burden linked to the influx of migrants. This article provides new evidence regarding the impact of material self‐interest on attitudes towards immigrants. It reports the results of a survey experiment embedded in representative surveys in 15 European countries before and after the European refugee crisis in 2014. As anticipated by the fiscal burden argument, it is found that rich natives prefer highly skilled over low‐skilled migration more than low‐income respondents do. Moreover, the study shows that these tax concerns among the wealthy are stronger if fiscal exposure to migration is high. No support is found for the labour market competition argument predicting that natives will be most opposed to migrants with similar skills. The results suggest that highly skilled migrants are preferred over low‐skilled migrants irrespective of natives’ skill levels.     

Effects of Outsourcing on Performance Measurement and Reporting: The Experience of Italian Local Governments

Much has changed over the past few years regarding the financial and nonfinancial information Italian Local Governments (LGs) publish even as a consequence of the process of externalization of local public services. This paper is aimed at describing the causes and the effects of the administrative reform process that interested Italian LGs and at identifying the possible different dimensions of LG performance. In particular, this paper distinguishes among performance achieved by LGs strictu sensu (general performance), performance attained by the municipal group (group performance), and performance achieved by all other producers of local public services (global performance). The group and global dimensions of performance are briefly discussed, as well as the tools used to measure them.