| Does Racism Affect a Migrant's Choice of City? I explicitly introduce racial conflict and cultural attitudes on racial diversity as determinants of destination choice to test their continued relevance to African Americans. I construct several measures of racial intolerance towards African Americans using hate crime activity and the feelings of white Americans about race extracted from a national social attitudes survey. Recognizing that African American migration may actually spawn hate crimes against them, I use a control function method with assaults on white police officers and hate crimes against Jews as instruments to correct for potential endogeneity. The results show that the probability of African American migrants choosing a city is significantly reduced by per capita hate crimes against their group, by the level of race-based crimes against them, by racially intolerant attitudes held by whites, and by poor evolution in whites' feelings about racial diversity. Also striking is the previously undocumented regional divide among African Americans. In the absence of controls for racial intolerance, previous studies have suggested that all African Americans prefer the North at the margin. I find that African Americans from the South prefer the South. In addition, the hedonic prices of racism differ for African Americans. African Americans from the North would have to be compensated with a 16% increase in log wages for a 1% increase in per capita hate crimes. Those from the South would require an 8% increase in log wages. Keywords: Racial Violence, Discrimination, Migration, Conditional Logit |
Ruby Henry's Job Market Paper |