Technological Change, Migration, and Political Attitudes

Technological change is widely considered to greatly affect the occupational and overall economic structure in rich countries (Autor, 2015). Individuals in routine task intensive occupations have disproportionally borne the brunt of recent technological advancements, as routine occupations have been substituted by capital. Following the framework introduced by Thewissen and Rueda (2016), we analyse the political consequences of this increased risk of future income loss using data for European countries between 2002 and 2014. We exploit regional variation in technology and trade shocks. In particular, we test whether individuals more exposed to income risk from technological change have more xenophobic political attitudes by blaming their weaker labour market position on migrants.