0:33 Intro. [Recording date: July 18, 2018.] Russ Roberts: My guest is Alberto Alesina.... Our topic for today is a recent paper that you wrote with Armando Miano and Stefanie Stantcheva. And the title of the paper is "Immigration and Redistribution." And the paper looks at attitudes and knowledge that people have of immigrants, and then their attitudes toward redistribution generally. What was your goal in writing this paper? Alberto Alesina: Well, this paper is part of a broad research project that I've been following the last several years about, given the growth of inequality in some places, what are the preference for people about the distribution? What leads them to be in favor or against redistribution? And one main theme in my research but also in that of others is that the generosity, both private generosity, say, the nation or public general, that they see it via the welfare state, travels[?] much better amongst people who are similar, of the same race, the same religion, the same culture. But it doesn't travel as well across ethnic groups, race, and so on. So, we thought that, the burst of immigration, that is, meaning in the United States and Europe, particularly in Europe in terms of burst, but also the big discussion about immigration, we thought that putting together [?] the distribution and diversity with immigration sounded interesting. Russ Roberts: Yeah; well it's an extremely interesting paper. And I learned a great deal that I was--mostly depressed to learn about. But, we'll see. There may be some cheerier things later on in our conversation. But, the basic idea--talk about the data set. You are looking across--how many countries, is it? Alberto Alesina: Six countries: The United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Italy, France, and Germany. We picked these six countries because, well, first of all, they are important countries, of course. The U.S. is the U.S. And the European countries are countries that have been particularly at the center of the debate about the immigration. Sweden, for example, has had a very large flow of immigrants, and there's a very large share of immigrants in their population. So, we thought that was a good group of countries, and go beyond 6 was getting a bit expensive, because these surveys are a bit expensive to make. Russ Roberts: And you surveyed a fairly large number of people in each country. Thousands, right? About 4000 in each country? Alberto Alesina: Yes. It's about 23,000 total. The number of countries--it is roughly equal across countries. There are actually slightly less in Sweden: for [?] one, Sweden was actually much more expensive for some reason, and Swedish people replied in a way which was so consistent we [?] with so little variance within them that we felt somehow we could stop the survey after-- Russ Roberts: 5 or 10 people-- Alberto Alesina: a couple of thousand. Five or ten, yeah. Russ Roberts: Well, it's a smaller country, too, than some of the others. Alberto Alesina: It's a smaller country. Russ Roberts: So, you surveyed six, in 6 countries. And, the first thing you look at is attitudes towards immigration. And these are all surveys of native-born people in each country. Alberto Alesina: Yes. All native-born. The first question is: Are you native-born? If you are not, you cannot take the survey. Russ Roberts: And you are looking at native-born, and we start with attitudes towards immigrants--excuse me, not attitudes. Just simple knowledge about the characteristics of immigrants. And, to me--this is a huge, important point, although not as huge as I thought it was going in--you are only and very carefully and very explicitly talking about legal--legal immigrants. Alberto Alesina: Yes. We wanted to focus on the legal immigrant, because--not because illegal immigrants are not important, but because we wanted to focus on taking away from our consideration issues having to do with illegal immigrant, that committing a crime by being in the country and therefore--we wanted to consider people who are legal but who are not your countrymen. Russ Roberts: And a definition of an immigrant, a legal immigrant, is someone who is there legally who--? Alberto Alesina: Who is not born in the country of the respondent. Which, by the way, is the official definition of immigrant by the OECD [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development].

6:05 Russ Roberts: Right. So that's how I would have defined it. So that's all good. The underlying question, of course--and we will maybe touch on this in the conversation--is: People may be told--and you tell them more than once that you're talking about legal immigrants. But, their attitudes and assessments may be colored by their lumping illegals and legals together. Obviously. It's one challenge. However, what I was surprised to discover was how small the estimates are of illegal immigration--relative to not illegal immigration--the proportion of the native population, of the country's population, that is legal versus illegal. So, talk about those numbers, because they are quite small in your--but even in the United States they are smaller than I would have thought. Alberto Alesina: Well, in the United States, I wouldn't say that they had a [?] more-- Russ Roberts: They're smaller than I might have thought. That's all. Alberto Alesina: Well, I don't know what you thought. But the number of legal immigrants is about 10%; and the number of illegal immigrants is about 3, 3.5%. I wouldn't say that's small. I am actually surprised by how big it was. But maybe we have different priors. Russ Roberts: Yeah. Alberto Alesina: For the other countries--I don't remember the actual number and I can't find them quickly. But they are not--they are very small. So they are really not something that-- Russ Roberts: Well, my memory from the paper is that in Europe, it's under 1%. In the 5 countries. Alberto Alesina: Yeah. Under 1%. But, although there is a more subtle problem: That, there are, the number is very small, but sometimes there may legally be those that people see in the most upsetting ways. Say, they are sleeping in the park, in the middle of the city. And a mother going there with their children, they see an immigrant, who is most likely legal, that is sleeping in the garden where she usually walks with her children, and she starts thinking that, you know, there are 10,000, I mean 10% of people are illegal immigrants. That is not true; but again, maybe the legal immigrant, especially visible or a train station in Europe, is the typical example. And these people may be particularly visible and particularly affecting people's perceptions. But, the best--not much we can do other than emphasizing very often in the question that we are talking about, legal. Russ Roberts: Yeah. I think the fancy political science word or psychology word is "salience." So, an illegal population could be more salient--more at the front of people's minds; more people want to be more aware. The other advantage, of course, legal, is that you can measure--that we know things about them, at least we think we do, in terms of government data. So, we have some say of at least assessing the accuracy of people's perceptions-- Alberto Alesina: Actually, not. I mean, to be honest, I was surprised--it was surprising to me: Often when you have--well, of course, you have data on numbers and some[?]. But when you have data about their income and education and what they do and whatever, those are--they are not administrative[?] data; they are survey data taken on immigrant. And sometimes those surveys, they don't quite distinguish between legal and illegal. So, it's actually harder than you think to get the data that we use in the paper distinguishing carefully between legal and illegal, because some sources are not very clear on what they do. So, I think one of the sort of minor, or for some research not so minor, part of the paper is tied, probably had the best data, at least for this country, that distinguish information about illegal versus legal.

10:09 Russ Roberts: Well, I guess the other question is, is that even, in my looking very crudely at various data on income and wages, I've often found it somewhat uneven. The sources that are more reliable don't necessarily make a distinction between legal and illegal. And, as you point out, some of the surveys are just--their overall quality might not be as high as some of the data we might use on, say, the unemployment rate or that are at the national level. Alberto Alesina: Of course. Russ Roberts: So, it came up in passing--I asked listeners to think about what you think the proportion of, say, the U.S. population is--about three quarters of our listeners to EconTalk are in the United States, at least, according to our crude survey at the end of the year. The rest of them are scattered in 64 or so, 65, 66 different countries. And it's interesting to think about what you as the listener would think is the population that is foreign born in your country. In the United States, Alberto, as you just said, it's about 10%. I wonder how well our listeners would have done on that. What's the range in the 6 countries, for foreign born? Alberto Alesina: By the way, before I answer your question, I must say, when I was writing this paper, oftentime when I was going out for dinner often with colleagues or friends, but we're all alike--kind of highly-- Russ Roberts: educated. Yeah. Alberto Alesina: educated. And I asked them your question, and every single one overestimated the number of immigrants. Not as much as the average in our sample. But, the range of answers that I was getting was about 15% rather than 10%. Anyway, going back to your question, there is, of course, a variance in answers, which we report in some online appendix of the paper. But the median--the distribution of the answer is not enormous, and the median and the average is actually around 30%, as we report in the paper. So, there are people who have crazy answers. By the way, we do all of our work excluding answers which are clearly crazy--like, you know, 100%, or zero. And we also exclude analysis people that have taken too little time in filling out the survey, because we can follow how much time they do: so people that take an unreasonable small amount of time, we exclude their answers, even though at the end of the day it doesn't make any difference. So, a large fraction of the respondents give an answer between 25 and 35, and the average answer is about 30. Russ Roberts: That's for the United States or across all 6 countries? Alberto Alesina: That's for the United States. For the other countries--France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom--they mistake along the same order of magnitude. The number of immigrants in the other country is not that far from that of the United States--a little higher, a little lower. And people respond in the same order of magnitude like the United States. The only country that is actually more accurate are the Swedes, who have more immigrants, but they are actually more accurate. Because there, the number of immigrants in Sweden is close to 18%, and their average answer is around 27. Russ Roberts: And that's not close; but it's not as way off as-- Alberto Alesina: It's not close, but it's about half of the mistake of the other countries. To be honest, when we started this survey, this project, then we asked the question, we were pretty sure that it would have been overestimated because of the salience of the immigration, because everybody today is reading about immigration, and all of that. We were quite shocked by the size of the misperception, I must say. Russ Roberts: Of course, you didn't--you were looking at immigration. I've done many surveys of--one of my favorite statistics: the proportion of the American workforce that earns the minimum wage or less. I've done it with lawyers; I've done it with law professors; I've done it with first-rate journalists. And, the median answer in those groups has always been about 20%. Actually, at the time I was doing those surveys, it was about 2. So it was off by an order of magnitude, an extraordinary misreading. So, it could be that on numerous--it has nothing to do with salience; it's just that people are very uninformed about a wide range of economic data, about the economy as a whole. But, what I thought was one of the more important things you find, of course, is that: that mis-estimate, that overestimate, across countries is not that different by various other characteristics of the respondents. By the various characteristics of the respondents. Correct? Alberto Alesina: That is quite correct. And it was actually more surprising than we thought. The only characteristics that distinguishes people in terms of what they expect about the number of immigrants--not so much the characteristics of immigrants; we'll get to it perhaps later--but on the size or the number of immigrants, not very much makes a difference in terms of the characteristics of the respondents. Neither in the United States nor in other countries. The only thing that seemed to matter--which, I find it actually interesting--is whether the respondent works in a sector which has over-representation of immigrants. And we defined that looking at the statistic of how many immigrants work in different sectors. We come out with a list of sectors that are high or low in terms of immigrants working in that sector. And, native respondents who work in sectors with more immigrants, they tend to overestimate more than their fellow natives about the number of immigrants. And other than that, no other characteristic mattered. Russ Roberts: And the other characteristics you have are income; you have-- Alberto Alesina: income, gender, education, and, in the United States where we had more data and more information, where the respondent lived. But these characteristics--income, gender, education--whether they know an immigrant or not, incidentally, we ask--matter for other answers but not for the number of immigrants. Russ Roberts: Which again is somewhat--it's not that surprising that people are making some crude estimate. It's not a number that's at people's fingertips. It's just interesting that they systematic--that they overestimate it rather than just be wildly inaccurate, which can of course be the other possibility.

18:05 Russ Roberts: Did you have party or ideological identification? Alberto Alesina: Yes, yes, yes. I was about to mention that. Part of the ideology--on this point we ask two types of questions. In this paper, we used only one answer; but we are planning to write, continue to work and write, use the other part of the question. One question was simply whether you classify yourself as right-wing or left-wing; and we used the appropriate word for the appropriate country. So, in the United States, liberal and conservative; in other countries we used the appropriate word in the language which is common for that country. But then we also asked them which party you vote for in the latest election; and we didn't use those answers yet. We may do it in another paper, because some really striking result about [?] voters and voters for populist parties in Europe; but we may get to that later. Not later in this interview because I haven't written the paper yet; but later in my career. Russ Roberts: Or next interview. Alberto Alesina: The left-wing makes--the left/right makes a lot of difference in just about everything except on the misperception of the number of the immigrants. Both right-wing and left-wing responders misperceive about the same level the number of the immigrants. They misperceive other things. The right-wing thinks that the immigrants are poorer, more reliant on welfare, less educated, lazier than the left-winger. And they have a bigger misperception--in fact, everybody has, but for the right-wing it's bigger--of where the immigrant comes from. Namely, there is another general misperception is that, in all countries, natives think the immigrant comes from problematic countries or problematic religion. For example, they vastly overestimate the number of Muslim immigrants; and they vastly underestimate the number of Christian immigrants. Russ Roberts: And that's true in all countries, according to, you are saying, across--before you correct for left/right, they over overestimate the Muslim population, underestimate the Christian-- Alberto Alesina: Right. So, everybody in every country overestimates the number of, say, Muslims and underestimate the number of Christians, with the exception of France. They don't overestimate the number of Muslims; and in fact, there are lots of Muslim immigrants in France. In the other countries, they all overestimate the number of Muslims and underestimate the number of Christians. But, the right-winger, they overestimate more than the left-winger-- Russ Roberts: Got it. Correct.

21:15 Russ Roberts: So, that's the next question. Is there anything else to add about--so people systematically, across ideology and across other characteristics overestimate the proportion of their fellow country-people that are immigrants. Let's talk then about other characteristics. You mention a left/right; but how accurate do people generally do on income, sources of countries for immigration? Are they accurate at all or do they overestimate systematically? Alberto Alesina: They tend to overestimate the origin of immigrants. I gave you the example of Islam and Christian, but there are also overestimation about North Africa and Latin America--of course, that changes depending on, if you are in the United States, of course, the key issue is Latin America; and if you are in Europe, it's North Africa. So, when you talk about regions, it becomes a bit more complicated. But, the general point is that, in every country, people tend to overestimate the immigrants that are salient and problematic for that country. As opposed to, say, immigrants from Western Europe or more similar countries to the natives. Russ Roberts: This is similar--by the way, I just want to mention this because I want to make clear what we're talking about. When NAFTA was passed in the United States--NAFTA of course stands for the North American Free Trade Agreement--all of the controversy was about Mexico. There are three countries: the United States, Mexico, and Canada. Canada was just not on the table as a worry, either because it isn't a worry--whatever that means--or because people are more likely to be worried about people who are "more different" than they are--however you might define that. And, to be honest--I'm going to reveal some of my biases or priors right now--I do think people demonize or scare people about, you know, people who are different from them--who don't have the same skin color, don't have the same religion. And, I think the news media, going back to my recent monologue on the topic, is prone to exaggerate and intensify the feelings people have about the other--people who are not like us, in whatever dimensions people are particularly worried about. And people, I think, like to read and watch and consume information that often increases their paranoia or xenophobia or anxiety, and for whatever reason don't seem so interested in being comforted by information that's more accurate, sometimes, about the situation. Alberto Alesina: I couldn't agree more. You said it wonderfully. I wish I could have said it as well, when I write; but that's exactly--I completely agree. And, of course, the paper that we are talking about does not have any concrete evidence of what you just said, but I would say it is a perfectly--in my view, the right explanation for this misperception and so on.

24:46 Russ Roberts: So, let's talk about a few other variables and then we'll get into some of the redistribution issues. You mention, for example, that conservatives in America are more likely to see immigrants as lazy; and liberals are more likely to see them as hard-working. How do you get at that difference? Is it a scale variable? Do you have--when you ask people? Alberto Alesina: No. Well, this is actually--the issue of--let me open a slight, but I think this is important. The issue of laziness or not laziness is something that more broadly in my earlier research, some of it with Stefanie as well, some of it is that attitude toward redistribution, both comparing in the United States and Europe but comparing people within each country, has to do with whether people that, the poor are worthy of their[?] or not. So, if you think are poor but they are lazy, everything else the same, you are less favorable to the redistribution. If you think that the poor are unfortunate, then you are more favorable to redistribution. It turns out that there are a ton of papers that confer that these are very, very important determinants of people's preference and willing to redistribute. So, in general, so that's a fact, that we knew even [?] in this paper. So, the way these attitudes are pursued is, in general, to ask a question which is a variant of a question that is in the World Values Survey, which is a worldwide, respected survey about attitudes and about aid to countries. And the question is--I don't remember the exact wording, but it's pretty close to saying, 'Do you think that the poor are poor because of lack of effort in their work, or because they are unfortunate?' Just to give you a number, in the United States something like 70% of respondents say that the poor are poor because of lack of effort; and in Europe, that number is 30%. So, this was an important--it is an important determinant of preference for redistribution. So, in evaluating in this paper to discuss the preference for redistribution versus immigration, one issue is to say, 'Do natives believe that immigrants are lazy?' So, we asked the question, 'Do you think that immigrants are poor because they are lazy?' And the vast majority of respondents responded that the immigrants are poor because they are lazy. But then we did something which is, we thought that was actually interesting: that namely, then we ask another question along the same line, which is, we said, 'Do you think immigrants are poorer than natives because they are lazier than natives?' And, to some surprise, in all countries there is a good portion that people did not think that immigrants were that much lazier than-- Russ Roberts: native-born[?]-- Alberto Alesina: A little bit--they were a little bit. But, not that much lazier than natives. So, the natives think that the immigrants aren't lazy, but, you know, not much more than the lazy poor. So, in other words, in Sweden, they think that poorer people are not lazy, neither the natives nor the immigrant, even though the immigrant a bit more than the natives. And in the United States, lots of people think that the poor are lazy, and the immigrant a little more than the natives, but not much more.

29:02 Russ Roberts: So, I'm going to make a little confession here; this is a digression. When I was younger, I felt that, you know, the America economy was so great, that anyone can find a job here--which still might be true in some dimension. But, it's also the case, since I've gotten older, I've gotten much more sympathetic to the straits and challenges facing people who grow up in situations very different from my own. And so I'm much more open-minded and agnostic about the question of why certain people struggle to make a living, say. There's all kinds of stuff going on. There's family background; there's genetics; there's bad luck; there's the current state of the economy--could be in recession. There's our horrible education system that predictably punishes--it's not horrible for everybody; it's particularly bad though for people in America who are growing up in very poor neighborhoods. Hard to disentangle that from family issues and culture, but it's still, I think, a problem. So, I'm much more agnostic about the question. Having said that, about whose "fault" it is why people are poor. And I'm much more sympathetic to the challenges of life. But, having said that, it's kind of interesting to think about that distinction you mentioned between the United States and Europe--that 70% of Americans blame the poor for their own poverty. And, in Europe it's basically reversed. What did you say? What did you say, 20% or-- Alberto Alesina: Yeah. Basically, it's close to being reversed. These are slightly, you know, 4- or 5-year old data, but I don't think they've changed that much in 5 years. Russ Roberts: No. So, what strikes me about that--it's a digression from our conversation, but I think it's interesting--of course, I suspect it's the case that it's easier for a poorer person in America to find work than it is in Europe. I think the American economy still is more dynamic than the European economy, especially for younger people struggling to get into the labor force, make the investments. And, of course, the welfare state in Europe is more generous--in Europe than it is in the United States--overall, at least across the board. And for certain groups, maybe, you know, one of which I'll turn to[?] is a little different. But, in general, across the board, for, say, working-age men, I think Europe is more generous. And so, it's--can you blame someone for taking a welfare payment that's more generous? So, it's reasonable that Europeans and Americans would differ. That doesn't necessarily get at the true, underlying perception they have of their situation versus, say, poor people. Now, I do agree--I think it's hard for successful people to empathize with people who are struggling. I think it's easy for successful people to credit their own merit rather than good luck. And yet, I do think there's some merit. And I do think there's some bad luck for people who are poor. But, I do think, it's not--that statement about your person in the United States--there's a lot going on there. That's what I'm trying to say, I guess. Alberto Alesina: Yes. I mean, actually, I have a comment, a comment and an important digression, and then a related point would bring us back to the paper. The first point is that there are data on social mobility in the United States and Europe. And I actually, in a previous paper with Stefanie Stantcheva and Edoardo Teso which is published in the AER [American Economic Review] of this year, we actually do work which is somewhat related methodologically to the paper we are talking about, asking people about what they think about social mobility in the United States, and in the same countries in Europe. And what it turns out is something that I hypothesize without much data in a book with Ed Glaeser about 10 years ago, is that Americans think, as you said, that there are much more options for upward mobility in the United States than in Europe. And, Europeans think that there is much less mobility than in the United States. And, but, in reality, the data on social mobility for the United States and Europe show that, on average, there is not that much difference. Europe--in the United States, of course, there is a huge variance. There is part of the country where social mobility is very high. Parts of it are very low. But just looking at the average, which is actually [?] number, is not that different from, say, Germany, France, and Italy. But Americans think that it is much bigger than what it is. And Europeans think that it is worse than it is. And therefore Americans are more optimistic about poor can make it. And probably more optimistic than they should be. And Europeans are very pessimistic, probably more pessimistic than they should be, about whether a poor can make it or not. Especially given the generous welfare state that you just mentioned--

34:02 Russ Roberts: Can I react to that? And then you can hold that thought, your second thought, which is going to bring us back to the paper. But, my thought, when you make that point--and I've seen a lot of those papers that show that, surprisingly American mobility is not that great and there's not that much movement among groups. And, a lot of that is a little bit hard to interpret. Because, first of all, sometimes it's relative mobility--the ability to move, you know, up a number of quintiles, say--as opposed to absolutely mobility: whether you actually can do better. Which are two very different things. And, the second thing is it doesn't--there's, often, I suspect--I just could be wrong; I just don't know. But, I suspect there's this activity, a selection bias problem there. Because the people who are not mobile are not in the sample. You are typically looking at people who have income in Year 1 and you are comparing them to Year 10, and seeing where they are relative to other people in the country. But, a lot of people maybe are not working. The reason I make the point about relative mobility or relative opportunities in the two countries is that the data on unemployment, especially youth unemployment--Europe seems so much higher. Maybe it's not measured the same way. Maybe it's temporary. Maybe it's doesn't last. But, the numbers that I typically read--and maybe they are biased sources--but the numbers I typically read about, say, youth unemployment in France or youth unemployment in the United Kingdom, are shockingly high compared to the United States. And so, I always assume that's a very bad forecast, a very depressing forecast for future opportunity. Do you think that's a relevant issue, the selection bias across countries? Alberto Alesina: It's a--that of course is not my research, but I certainly agree with you that this number about unemployment, youth unemployment, in some countries, are staggering. And, of course, when we talk about social mobility we are talking about the past--the past generation. It is perfectly possible that in future generations things will look quite different for Europe. They are certainly looking very different for Italy. Russ Roberts: But I'm making the point that, even in the current, say, recent short-term measures of mobility, people who aren't in the labor force either at the beginning of your sample or the end, are not called stagnant. They are just not in the data. That's what I'm wondering. Because they are not observed to have an income. They are not observed to have any income. They are not treated as a zero. They are just rejected from the sample. Alberto Alesina: Right. That is a good point. I suspect people that worked on this, like Raj Chetty[?] and company that work for the United States-- Russ Roberts: you'd think they'd worry about that, yeah-- Alberto Alesina: the issue of the--I don't know how, but they must have worried about that. But I'm not that [?]. But, certainly, if you compare the United States and Europe with very different unemployment data, employment subsidies, and treatment of unemployed, I'm not 100% sure what they do. Russ Roberts: Okay. So, I interrupted you. Do you remember where you were going to go to bring us back to the paper? Alberto Alesina: The paper--it's related to the transfer and social welfare and transfer to the poor, and the lazy, and so on. There is one experiment--or not experiment--one question we ask which ask which we thought was fascinating, which was: First, we ask whether the native believe that immigrants receive more, per capita, more transfer than natives. And they answer is, 'Yes. They receive more transfers than natives.' Now, you may say, 'Well, that's fine. If they think that they are poorer it's perfectly normal that they receive more transfers.' But then we asked another question, which is, 'Suppose that in your country there are two individuals. The first one is named, for the United States, say, John--typical American name. And for the other person is named,' and we choose a clearly immigrant name, say, Mohammed or Carlos, or we actually try with different names and the result doesn't make any difference. And, they have the same income, the same work[?]. We make it very clear that they are identical, except the one is native and the other one is presumably immigrant. And there are a very large number of respondents both in the United States and in other countries--I remember a number like 50% of the respondents in a few countries, particularly France and Italy were the worst offender--they answer that the immigrant gets much more than the natives. Simply because he's called Carlos and not John, or Mohammed and not Alberto. And, looking at the answer, there is like something close to 20%--I don't think this is reported in the paper but I remember the number, that about 20% of French respondents--and the number was a bit lower in the other countries but not that much lower--believe that the person named with an immigrant name received more than twice as much as the native. So, there is-- Russ Roberts: So, it's not like a dollar more. Alberto Alesina: So, it sounds like natives perceive that the system discriminates in favor of immigrants. And, with obvious consequences for their views about the welfare state.

39:59 Russ Roberts: Now, when you say you gave them two individuals with the same income and the same characteristics except their names, did each respondent get two people to think about? Or did some people get the immigrant, versus some people got the native name? Alberto Alesina: No, no, no. The same person. The same respondent we told: Consider two individuals. The question was, 'Consider two individuals. One is named John, and one is named Mohammed. They have the same income,'--not to make it too boring we wrote a question that was meant to make think that they were economically identical. But--they had the same number of children, where one was, [?] named John and the other one, and how much did they get? And there were varied[?] options: the same, which of course, the right answer. And, by the way, in Sweden, they, like, you know--no, actually, it was Germany, they were actually right. Like, 90% of the German respondents said they get the same. Which is, of course, the right answer. But in all the other countries there was, you know, up to 20% of people said that Mohammed gets more than twice as much. Russ Roberts: Twenty percent said that Mohammed gets more than twice as much? Alberto Alesina: Yeah. Russ Roberts: Wow. Alberto Alesina: We didn't report that particular number of the twice as much in the paper; but in the paper we do report that, like, 50% of French believe, and 50% of Italian--more than 50% of French and Italians--believe that the Mohammed guy gets more than John. Russ Roberts: That's fascinating. Kind of extraordinary. And-- Alberto Alesina: But in Italy--I live in Italy, where I--I am in Italy where, as you know, there is this crazy--where in Europe where there is this issue of emergency in the Mediterranean and all that. But, a kind of thing you read about immigrants, really blows your mind away. It is unbelievable. Russ Roberts: Of this kind, you mean. This kind of result. Alberto Alesina: Yeah, this kind. The idea that you read things like, 'These people come here and they become rich with our welfare, and they don't work. And we pay their taxes. And, we pay them, with their taxes.' While it turns out that in Italy, actually because the age in population, which is well known by people who believe in number and not perception that actually illegal[legal?] immigrants are helping us because they are [?] and they have more kids and they pay contribution to our pension system which is in bad shape. Russ Roberts: Yeah. I always like to point out that illegal immigrants typically are contributing to Social Security and other pensions, essentially; but are not going to collect it if they are illegal because they don't have a legitimate Social Security number of their own. They are just using a fake one. But, the other point I would make-- Alberto Alesina: But even the legal contribute more than they get. They help--they help the Social Security System in Italy because they are younger than average-- Russ Roberts: because they are working. I would point out, again, that I would guess that if you ask the average American what somebody makes on Disability or various welfare programs, they would wildly overestimate the amount. It's just interesting that they even more wildly overestimate it for someone with an immigrant name, rather than a domestic name. Alberto Alesina: On this particular score, the Americans were not the worst offenders. I think the Italians and the French were the worst offenders. But even the Americans overestimated wildly.

43:49 Russ Roberts: Okay. So, I want to turn to redistribution now, and attitudes toward redistribution. So, you did some standard things that were looking at the relationship between people's attitudes towards immigrants and their willingness to support redistribution; expansion of or existence of the welfare state. Or even private charity. But, you also did some very creative things. Well, let's start with that. Let's start with what you found about that, and then I want to move to the priming issue. Alberto Alesina: Okay. So, well, first of all, we started with asking people about whether redistribution in a fairly detailed way. We asked them a lot of questions, because we had the same, we used the same question we used in a previous paper. So, we are very specific about a bunch of questions; but probably similarity of the tax system, and whether you want to spend on Social Security or other stuff. And also, we asked them to make a donation. We tell them that they had some ticket for a lottery, and if they win the lottery--I forget what it were but some-- Russ Roberts: $1000, I remember. I read the paper more recently than you have. Alberto Alesina: $1000. Yeah, yeah, right. A thousand dollars. And, but they could donate some of those dollars to a charity, and we specify for each country the charity--a couple of charities they could donate to. Which specifies to make sure that needn't pick one that was hated by most. So, the answer about the distribution was, the answer about the distribution was usually fairly standard: People would be expected in favor of the distribution where[?], and left-wing more than right-wing, and rich people less than poor people. And, you know, all perfectly normal. And then we asked, the second set of questions was about immigration: What do you think about, we should have restricted--various examples of: Do we want to have more restrictive laws about immigration? Limit the number? A bunch of many, many questions which put, classified people as those in favor of welcoming immigrants or people think, 'Let's keep them out.' So, and again, we got very reasonable response. Left-winger were more in favor of immigration. Interestingly, poor people working in immigration-intensive sector did not want immigrant. But, rich people, even though they are living in, immigration-intensive people, wanted them. So, Indian engineer[?] in Silicon Valley where more than welcome by, you know, rich people in Silicon Valley, to pick an example; but poor people did not want workers--is going to be competing with their job--in high-immigration sectors. And then we did a few things. The first experiment we did, which was, we thought the results were quite striking-- Russ Roberts: Yes, they are. It's amazing.-- Alberto Alesina: We did the following. So, half of the respondents, we first showed the, what we call redistribution blocks--a bunch of questions about redistribution. Without ever, ever mentioning immigration. And never, when they start taking the survey, they have any idea that the survey is about immigration. So, the first set of questions they get after their personal characteristic is: What do you think about the distribution? And then, we ask them about various questions about immigration. To the other half of randomly chosen people, we do the opposite: We first ask them a bunch of questions about immigration. And then, we ask them a bunch of questions about redistribution. The same question, the same to blocks, but changing the order. So, the only difference between the order is that those that see immigration first, they are prompt[?] to think about the issue of immigration, of course. In fact, we ask them maybe 15 questions about immigration. So, clearly they have been thinking about immigration. And the result is that those people who have seen the immigration question first, they are much more averse to redistribution--holding everything else constant--than people who have seen the redistribution question first. So, making people think about immigration makes them much less favorable to redistribution. And that is very, very strong--it's just there. No matter how you look at the data, it's just there: The total for every country, [?] for the countries together. And, it's just there. Russ Roberts: And, what's the magnitude? What kind of magnitudes are we talking about, here? Because, you have to just make an aside here: You can have a statistically significant result that's not very significant. So, how much difference does--what kind of impact does it have? How important is that difference? It's imaginable, I understand, that people who are prompted might respond differently than if they weren't prompted. But, you know, how big is the difference? Alberto Alesina: There are of course many ways of looking at the size of the difference in different countries according to different answers about different types of the distribution. One summary answer is to say that, about, a little more than 5% of the people who have seen the immigration question first are likely to say that immigration, that inequality is a problem. In other words, 3% of those, 50%[?] more of the people who see immigration first are more likely to think that immigration is a problem. Again, that number varies across countries; and it varies depending on which measure of redistribution you look at. Russ Roberts: You say--it's a 5% change. You said? Alberto Alesina: A 5% change. Which is 3 percentage points. Russ Roberts: And I'm looking at the paper here--it says that's about 13% of the gap between Left- and Right-wing respondents. So, it takes you an eighth of the way toward the other ideology. Alberto Alesina: Exactly.

50:54 Russ Roberts: So, what do we make of all this? It is very interesting work. It's extremely timely, for better or for worse: it's a huge issue. And, in a recent episode of EconTalk I had a long monologue on the issue why things seem to be so different politically in the United States and in Europe today, relative to, say, 20 years ago. And one answer is, a standard is, that the rise of populism--worries about Brexit, and the vote on Brexit, in the United Kingdom; the election of Donald Trump--that a lot of this is a response to immigration. And my claim, at least in that monologue--and I gave a one-sided view there because I wanted to hope people understand how I think about this. Whether it's right or not, I don't know. But, my claim is that a lot of our attitudes toward various political issues are being created in a very different environment for news and information. That, we are prone to find news sources because of the rise of the Internet, and Cable Television, we are prone to find news sources that confirm our biases, that get us riled up, that make us angry, that vilify our ideological opponents. And, so, the question--I do think people are much more concerned about immigration. But, what your work says, at least the part that confirms my story, is that: It's true people are more concerned about it, but part of their concern is not accurate. It's exaggerated, the impulse that people have to be worried about people who are different from them. And, that we are prone, if we are not careful, to work ourselves up about something that's not as important as we might think it is, or that we might hear it is, over and over and over again--if we watch Fox News or MSNBC, if we read the New York Times versus the Wall Street Journal. And, that this is having a serious impact on our political life. Now, your paper is not about this. Your paper is just trying to characterize how people feel about immigrants, and how they feel, understand, how accurately they understand it; and the results of their support for various forms of redistribution. But, it seems to me that the underlying problem here, whether it's the news environment that I'm thinking I'm particularly worried about these days, or the concerns that people have, are: They are not accurate. It's deeply disturbing. Alberto Alesina: I couldn't agree more. But, let me just add that, we, in our conversation we focused about what is on about redistribution. But there is also another part of the paper in which we look at how these misperceptions about immigrant lead to different views about immigration. Immigration policies. Not redistribution. So, and there, the effect of this misperception are not surprisingly very, very large. Because, if people have complete--if people feel that in their country they are invaded by immigrants, clearly they have different views than if they do not believe that. So, the misperception about the size, type, and nature of immigration affects not only indirectly preference for distribution, but also very directly a discussion about immigration policies, which, as you said, is very divisive, both in the United States and in Europe. And I couldn't agree more with you. I mean, this paper, needless to say, this paper has no prescription for whether, what policies for immigration to have. It's very far from having any policy prescription. But, all we can say, all that this paper suggests is that this conversation should be happening with real data and not with perceived data. And not with ideological screen, but reality. And unfortunately, as you said, with examples in the United States, that's happening in other countries as well. I mean, there's one example that I always make, that is: Even in the more, in the best newspapers in Italy, when there is a crime committed, now it is perfectly normal, acceptable, to say an immigrant from country X has committed this crime. Now, this immigrant may actually be second-generation or an Italian citizen: but the news reads, 'Some guy from,' say, 'Morocco has killed an Italian woman.' And you can imagine what that kind of reaction generates. And there is a lot of it going on. And that indeed would cause many of the misperceptions. And, of course, those people who are anti-immigration, for whatever reason, even for perfectly reasonable and honest and intellectually defensible reason, they have no interest in correcting these biases. Russ Roberts: Yeah; and I think--you know--for me, I'm very open and up front about the fact that I think immigration is generally a good--has been a good thing for America and continues to be a good thing for most Americans. And I say that out of compassion for people who live in places that are poor, who have come here; and also, their impact mostly overwhelmingly positive on American life--culturally, but also just in the fact that their opportunities to work here, to do things at lower wages than Americans would be happy to do them at, that's hard on some Americans. It's good for a lot of Americans in the money that is saved by paying less is freed up to do other things that helps create opportunities for Americans who have skills like immigrants. So, it's very unclear; and obviously it's a huge debate about who are winners or losers from a more open-border policy. But I'm generally, for a whole bunch of reasons, selfish and non-selfish, interested in having open borders. Whether they should be more open than they are now--I tend to be sympathetic that they should be more open. How open is an interesting question. I think we should get rid of the welfare state for immigrants at least right away; I think we should discourage people coming here to be beneficiaries of the welfare state. But I don't think that's a big problem right now. At least, that's my perception.