Essays in Applied Economics, Migration, and Conflict

This dissertation is a collection of three independent essaysin Applied Economics, Migration and Conflict. Chapter 2 focuses on the interconnectedness between labour market division, economic rents concentration, political extremism, andethnic conflict. A natural experiment of history that occurredin the late 1960s in South Tyrol, a northernmost and predominantly German-speaking region of Italy, is exploited to investigate whether frictions in the labour market may induce amove in the voting preferences of a privileged minority grouptowards a more extremist political party. Chapter 3 buildson propositions from Latane’s Dynamic Social Impact Theory ´(Latane, 1981, 1996) to analyse the evolution and diffusion ´of anti-immigrant attitudes across European NUTS2 regionsbetween 2002 and 2014. The identification of a spatially dependent diffusion and clustering process of anti-immigrantattitudes has a significant bearing for the understanding ofthe rise and fall of populist movements across Europe andchanging electoral support for xenophobic parties across European regions over time. The last chapter explores the extentto which scientific migration and mobility barriers shape processes of scientific knowledge production and dissemination