We study how news coverage of immigrant criminality impacts voting in one of the most controversial referendums in recent years—the 2009 Swiss minaret ban. We combine a comprehensive crime detection data set with detailed information on newspaper coverage. We first document a large upward distortion in media reporting of immigrant crime during the prereferendum period. Exploiting quasi-random variations in crime incidence, we find a positive first-order effect of news coverage on support for the ban. Our quantification shows that, in absence of the media bias, the pro-ban vote would have decreased from 57.6% to 53.5% at the national level.

We use georeferenced information on the location of violent events in sub-Saharan African countries and provide evidence that external income shocks are important determinants of the intensity and geography of civil conflicts. More precisely, we find that (a) the incidence, intensity, and onset of conflicts are generally negatively and significantly correlated with income variations at the local level; (b) this relationship is significantly weaker for the most remote locations; and (c) at the country level, these shocks have an insignificant impact on the overall probability of conflict outbreak but do affect the probability that conflicts start in the most opened regions.