Beliefs about the Labor Market Impact of Immigration

Last registered on May 23, 2018
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Beliefs about the Labor Market Impact of Immigration
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0002247
Initial registration date
May 31, 2017

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
May 31, 2017, 11:18 AM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated
May 23, 2018, 5:58 AM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Country
United States of America
Region

Primary Investigator

Name
Ingar Haaland
Affiliation
Norwegian School of Economics
Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Christopher Roth
PI Affiliation
University of Oxford
Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status
Completed
Start date
2017-05-31
End date
2017-06-15
Keywords
Labor, Welfare
Additional Keywords
immigration, belief updating, labor market concerns
JEL code(s)
C91, D83, F22, J15
Secondary IDs
Abstract
We provide causal evidence on how people's beliefs about the labor market effects of immigration affect their attitudes toward immigration. In the study, we plan to elicit people's beliefs about how the Mariel boatlift, which caused a large influx of low-skilled Cuban immigrants to Miami, Florida, affected local labor market outcomes. Then, drawing on the results from Card (1990), half of the participants will receive information about the actual labor market consequences of the Mariel boatlift. Subsequently, we will measure the participants' support for immigration with self-reported and behavioral measures. In the attached pre-analysis plan, we outline our plan for analysis of the data, including the main specifications of interest, the dimensions of heterogeneity, and corrections for multiple hypothesis testing.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Haaland, Ingar and Christopher Roth. 2018. "Beliefs about the Labor Market Impact of Immigration." AEA RCT Registry. May 23. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.2247-4.0
Former Citation
Haaland, Ingar and Christopher Roth. 2018. "Beliefs about the Labor Market Impact of Immigration." AEA RCT Registry. May 23. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/2247/history/29915
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Intervention Start Date
2017-05-31
Intervention End Date
2017-06-15

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
1) Attitudes towards low-skilled immigrants.

2) Attitudes towards high-skilled immigrants.

3) Intention to sign the petitions.

4) Actual signing of the petitions.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
1) Attitudes towards low-skilled immigrants:
We compute an index of people's support for increasing the number of low-skilled immigrants based on the following two questions:
- Do you think the US should allow more or less of low-skilled immigrants that are highly familiar with American values and traditions to come and live here?
- Do you think the US should allow more or less of low-skilled immigrants that are not familiar with American values and traditions to come and live here?

2) Attitudes towards high-skilled immigrants:
We compute an index of people's support for increasing the number of high-skilled immigrants based on
the following two questions:
- Do you think the US should allow more or less of high-skilled immigrants that are highly familiar with American values and traditions to come and live here?
- Do you think the US should allow more or less of high-skilled immigrants that are not familiar with American values and traditions to come and live here?

3) Intention to sign the petitions:
This variable takes the value minus 1 for people who said they want to sign the petition in favor of decreasing the number of H-2B visas; value 1 for people who said they want to sign the petition in favor of increasing the number of H-2B visas; and value 0 for people who did not want to sign any of the two different types of visa.

4) Actual signing of the petitions:
This variable is only available at the group level. We compute the "net support for increasing H2-B visas" as the number of actual signatures for the petition in favor of increasing the number of H2-B visas minus the number of actual signatures for the petition in favor of decreasing the number of H2-B visas. We then compare the proportion of positive minus negative signatures for the treatment and control group. To do so, we will employ the "Mann-Whitney U test".

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
We first elicit people's beliefs about the effects of the Mariel boatlift, an unexpected mass immigration of Cubans to the Miami, Florida, which increased the size of the workforce in Miami by 8 percent almost at once. We ask our participants what they think happened to wages and unemployment in Miami relative to wages and unemployment in other comparable US cities that did not experience large inflows of low-skilled immigrants. Specifically, we ask our participants what they think happened to the wages and the unemployment of (i) high-skilled workers and (ii) low-skilled workers.

In a between-subject design, we then inform subjects in the treatment group about the results from a seminal study about the labor market consequences of the Mariel boatlift (Card, 1990). Specifically, we truthfully inform the subjects that this study found that the mass immigration of Cubans to Miami had virtually no adverse effects on the labor market. By contrast, subjects in the control group do not receive any information and go straight from the belief elicitation questions to the outcome questions.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Randomizer in Qualtrics with the option "evenly present elements".
Randomization Unit
Individual
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
3000 individuals.
Sample size: planned number of observations
3000 individuals.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
1500 subjects in each treatment.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
3000 participants give us 0.8 power to detect an effect size of 0.10 of a standard deviation between the treatment and the control group in the main study at a .05 significance level.
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Department's Research Ethics Committee, University of Oxford
IRB Approval Date
2017-05-22
IRB Approval Number
ECONCIA17-18-008
Analysis Plan

Analysis Plan Documents

Beliefs about the Labor Market Impact of Immigration: Updated Pre-Analysis Plan

MD5: a4e5a307b179413cb4ac3bbe92895535

SHA1: f0291d95557bacd71cf4632b0a15f978249139f8

Uploaded At: June 07, 2017

Beliefs about the Labor Market Impact of Immigration: Pre-Analysis Plan

MD5: 2fcaf8b80b14c0b33358c3f8a29e7f4d

SHA1: 2be61f8da8fe196a76a31e707ad38e7e3411fca0

Uploaded At: May 31, 2017

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
Yes
Intervention Completion Date
June 14, 2017, 12:00 +00:00
Data Collection Complete
Yes
Data Collection Completion Date
June 14, 2017, 12:00 +00:00
Final Sample Size: Number of Clusters (Unit of Randomization)
2
Was attrition correlated with treatment status?
No
Final Sample Size: Total Number of Observations
3130
Final Sample Size (or Number of Clusters) by Treatment Arms
1574 respondents in control group, 1556 respondents in treatment group
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Abstract
Labor Market Concerns and Support for Immigration
Citation
Haaland, Ingar and Roth, Christopher, Labor Market Concerns and Support for Immigration (2017). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3017420
URL
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3017420

Reports & Other Materials