There is a longstanding academic debate regarding whether local governments can meaningfully shape their long run fortunes through their own policymaking, or whether the autonomy of localities is swamped by larger macroeconomic forces. In the arena of development policy, specifically, some...

A survey of prior research testing the threat and contact hypotheses uncovers a wide, often conflicting, range of conclusions regarding the influence of contexts on attitudes. Through a reanalysis (verification and replication) of publicly available data we test the threat/contact hypotheses by...