Revisiting the Relationship between Ethnic Diversity and Preferences for Redistribution: Comment

In this paper, we revisit the question raised in Dahlberg et al. (2012, Journal of Political Economy 120, 41-76) concerning a causal relationship between ethnic diversity and preferences for redistribution. We find that their results are based on (i) an unreliable and potentially invalid measure of preferences for redistribution, (ii) an endogenously selected sample, and (iii) a mismeasurement of the refugee placement program. Correcting for any of these three problems reveals that there is no evidence of any relationship between ethnic diversity and preferences for redistribution. We also discuss what is currently known about the refugee placement program, and to what extent it can be used for estimating causal effects more generally.