When the neighbors are watching: Immigrant integration policy and housing wealth

We hypothesize and establish empirically that the effects of migrant integration policies on housing wealth are influenced by public attention to immigration. Using a unique policy converting temporary refugee reception centers into integration facilities, we conduct an event study analysis. Our results show that timing matters: implementation during times of high public attention to immigration reduces housing wealth, while implementation during times of low attention has no impact. These findings suggest that the backlash effect of integration policies estimated in the literature may be driven by public perceptions of migration crises.