Does immigration affect public education expenditures? Quasi-experimental evidence

This paper studies the impact of immigration on public education expenditures in EU-15 countries. Identification comes from the use of the 1990s Balkan wars (in Bosnia and Kosovo) as a source of exogenous variation in immigrant inflows to mitigate a possible Tiebout-type bias from endogenous mobility. An increase in foreign population is found to have a small negative effect on public education expenditures. The elasticity of education spending with respect to immigrant population share is −.15. The negative relationship between immigration and public spending on education is consistent with the empirical literature showing evidence on low levels of public good provision in heterogeneous and ethnic diverse societies.