Corporate and Mass Preferences Over Immigration: Experimental Evidence

• In Event: State Politics and Policy & New Directions in Political Economy Virtual Poster Session
  In Virtual Poster Session: New Directions in Political Economy Virtual Poster Session

Abstract

A voluminous body of empirical scholarship has examined public attitudes towards immigration, partly because it is relatively easy to do with survey experiments, but much less empirical work considers the immigration preferences of businesses. Given the important role businesses play in shaping immigration policies, we seek to rectify the imbalance in research attention. Drawing on conjoint survey experiments of both Japanese firms and the general public, we find that while the mass public prefers skilled foreign workers, firm managers favor immigration in labor scarce industries. We attribute these differences to information asymmetries between business leaders and the general public. Our findings underscore the importance of understanding both sets of attitudes, where they come from, and how they interact to influence public policy in democratic systems.

Authors

• Rieko Kage, University of Tokyo

• Frances McCall Rosenbluth, Yale University

• Seiki Tanaka, University of Groningen