Publications

Cappelen, Alexander W., Hagen, Rune Jansen, Sørensen, Erik Ø., & Tungodden, Bertil (2014). «Do non-enforcable contracts matter? Evidence from an international lab experiment», Review of Income and Wealth, Vol. 60 (1): 100-113.

Nowiak, Wojciech, (2016). “Rodzina migracyjna. Obraz rodziny na podstawie badań polskich imigrantów w Norwegii».  (English title: “Migrants families. The experiences of Poles in Norway”) Research Papers of Wrocław University of Economics. - ISSN 1899-3192

This article examines the experience of Poles living and working in Norway

Cappelen, Cornelius, Midtbø, Tor, & Kuhnle, Stein (2016). «Velferdssjåvinisme i Norge? Et listeeksperiment» («Welfare chauvinism in Norway? A list experiment»), Norsk Statsvitenskapelig Tidsskrift, 32 (2): 122- 141.

I denne artikkelen undersøker vi i hvilken grad nordmenn synes det er rettferdig å dele velferdsgoder med arbeidsimmigranter fra EØS-området. Vi bruker et surveyeksperiment – listeeksperimentet – for å forsøke å finne ut om folk virkelig sier hva de mener om dette spørsmålet. Ved å sammenligne resultatene fra listeeksperimentet med resultatene fra et direktespørsmål med en sammenlignbar formulering, finner vi at mange underrapporterer velferdssjåvinistiske holdninger. Dette indikerer at velferdssjåvinisme er et sensitivt tema beheftet med såkalt sosial ønskverdighetsskjevhet (social desirability bias): en tendens til å svare i henhold til hva respondenten mener er sosialt akseptabel atferd, og til ikke å rapportere ufordelaktig informasjon om seg selv.

Cappelen, Cornelius, & Midtbø, Tor (2016). «Intra-EU labour migration and support for the Norwegian welfare state», European Sociological Review, 32 (6): 691-703.

In this article, we explore how the recent influx of labour migrants to Norway from EU countries has affected public support for the welfare state. We argue that that intra-EU labour immigration may pose a challenge to welfare state legitimacy. A set of survey experiments is used to measure welfare chauvinistic attitudes towards labour immigrants in an unobtrusive manner and identify potential causal effects of intra-EU labour immigration on attitudes towards welfare spending. We find a high degree of manifest and concealed welfare chauvinism. The tendency is especially strong among women. We also identify a negative effect of intra-EU labour migration on social spending preferences per se, suggesting that tendencies already reported in the United States may have started to surface in Europe as well.

Cappelen, Cornelius, Grendstad, Gunnar, & Skiple, Jon. K. (2016). "Avveiningen mellom justismord og falske frifinnelser: en surveyundersøkelse av folks rettsoppfatning". Tidsskrift for Rettsvitenskap, 128 (02-03): 107-137.

Cappelen, A., Cappelen C., Kuhnle, S., & Tungodden, B (2018). "How to tighten social security: attitudes in the general population", Social Policy and Administration, (forthcoming, 2018).

In recent years, OECD countries have faced pressure to cut the costs of social security and different strategies have been utilized to achieve this:

•           Stricter eligibility requirements.
•           Reduced level of benefits.
•           Reduced maximum duration of benefits.

In order to better understand the political support for these three strategies, this contribution reports the results from a survey designed to measure which of them that the general population would prefer given the assumption that cost cuts are necessary. A key difference between them is how they distribute the burden of cost reductions between different benefit recipients: Should the benefit reduction be equally distributed among all recipients (reduce the benefit level) or should it be concentrated on some groups (tighten eligibility)?
We find large heterogeneity in how people make the trade-off and thus which of the strategies for cost reduction that they prefer. Right-wingers typically prefer to tighten the eligibility criteria, while left-wingers typically prefer to reduce the benefit level. Furthermore, we find that this difference does not primarily reflect different attitudes towards income and wealth redistribution, but are likely to reflect views about the deservingness of different groups and the importance of efficiency considerations.

Cappelen, Cornelius & Peters, Yvette (2017). “Diversity and Welfare State Legitimacy in Europe. The Challenge of Intra-EU Migration”, Journal of European Public Policy, 24 (1): 1-21.

It has convincingly been argued that in the United States, immigration is detrimental to welfare state support. In Europe, on the other hand, there is little evidence for such a negative relationship. This article examines whether a particular type of immigration—rapidly escalating intra-EU immigration—reduces public support for the welfare state. We argue that because EU states cannot discriminate against resident EU nationals from other countries in the field of social security, intra-EU immigration will negatively affect attitudes towards welfare spending. To test this expectation, we use data from the European Social Survey of 2008, among other sources. The results of our multilevel analyses document a negative relationship between intra-EU immigration and welfare state support, supporting our hypothesis.

Cappelen, Cornelius & Peters, Yvette (2017). “Intra-EU Migration and Welfare Chauvinism”, Journal of Public Policy, (published online 2017)

We examine whether intra-EU migration affects welfare-chauvinistic attitudes, i.e. the idea that immigrants’ access to the welfare system should be restricted. According to group threat theory, migration can unleash feelings of insecurity and thus trigger welfare chauvinism. According to intergroup contact theory, welfare chauvinism should decrease when immigration is higher, because contact reduces prejudice and softens anti-immigrant stances. We test these theories using data from the European Social Survey 2008/2009, supplemented with country-level data, and analyze these data using a multilevel ordered logit approach. We find a negative relation between intra-EU immigration and welfare chauvinism, supporting the intergroup contact theory: countries with more intra-EU migration, welfare chauvinism tends to be higher. Furthermore, this relationship is particularly pronounced in so-called ‘Bismarckian’ welfare systems. However, the relative size of different intra-EU immigration groups matters too: more relative East European immigration, the higher the level of welfare chauvinism.

Nowiak, Wojciech, Narozna, Dominika & Cappelen, Cornelius (2016). "Migracja wewnetrzna w UE oraz EOG a problem nielegalnego rynku pracy. Analyzia sytuacji imigranttow z Polski zamieszkujacych okreg Hordland", Political Science Review, 3 ; ISSN: 1426-8876.

Nowiak, Wojciech, Narozna, Dominika & Muriaas, Ragnhild (2016). "Nordycki model wspierania rodzin niewydolnych w opiece nad dzieckiem. Analiza sytuacji Polakow oraz ich rodzin w Norwegii" (Nordic model of aiding dysfunctional families in childcare. An analysis of the perception of the situation of Poles and their families in Norway), Research Papers of Wroclaw University of Economics: 116-133; ISSN: 1899-3192.

Nowiak, Wojciech, Kuhnle, Stein & Narozna, Dominika (2016). "Rodzina migracyina. Obraz rodziny na podstawie badan polskich imigrantow w Norwegii" (Migrant families. The experience of Poles in Norway), Research Papers of Wroclaw University of Economics: 81-106; ISSN: 1899-3192.

Cappelen, Alexander W., Halvorsen, Trond, Sørensen, Erik Ø. & Bertil Tungodden (2017). “Face-saving or fair-minded: what motivates moral behavior”, Journal of the European Economic Association, published online 7 June 2017.

We study the relative importance of intrinsic moral motivation and extrinsic social motivation in explaining behavior in the dictator game. We introduce a novel design that manipulates these two dimensions. The paper offers four main findings. First, intrinsic moral motivation is of fundamental importance. Second, extrinsic social motivation matters and is crowding-in with intrinsic moral motivation. Third, extrinsic social motivation generates behavior consistent with some participants being motivated by guilt and shame and others by social esteem and pride. Fourth, sharing behavior in the dictator game is strongly associated with charitable giving outside the lab and with political preferences.

Cappelen, Cornelius & Muriaas, Ragnhild.  "Polish labour migrants and undeclared work in Norway", forthcoming Scandinavian Political Studies, 2018.

We examine how East-West EU migration can foster or reinforce reasons for participating in undeclared work. At the EU level, the issue of undeclared work is seen as a mounting challenge and public discussion now associates a supposed increase in undeclared work with the EU’s open borders. Method: We conducted 74 semi-structured interviews with Polish labor migrants in Norway, both temporary migrants and more settled ones. A substantial part of these interviews focused on undeclared work. Results: Our study highlights that more reasons, motivations and opportunities for undeclared work arise when the focus is strictly on labour migrants, and that the experience of living transnational lives can be a prime motivator for participating in undeclared work.

Cornelius Cappelen & Goldeng, Eskil (2014). "Unemployment compensation and the trade-off between equality and personal responsibility". I: H. Sinding Aasen, S. Gloppen, A-M. Magnussen, & E. Nilssen (eds.), Juridification and social citizenship in the welfare state. Edward Elgar Publishing: 60-80. 

Cappelen, Cornelius (2016). "Intra-EU Migration and the Moral Sustainability of the Welfare State". I: Y. Peters & M. Tatham (eds.), Democratic Transformations in Europe 31 – Challenges and Opportunities, London: Routledge: 143-162.

Oldervoll, Johannes A. & Kuhnle, Stein (2016). "The Sustainability of European Welfare States: the Significance of Changing Labour Markets". I: Y.  Peters & M. Tatham (eds.), Democratic Transformations in Europe 31 – Challenges and Opportunities, London: Routledge: 120-142.

Second-best fairness: experimental evidence on the trade-off between false positives and false negatives in distributive choices (Cornelius Cappelen, Alexander Cappelen, Bertil Tungodden).

In many important distributive situations it is difficult to distinguish between individuals who are deserving and individuals who are undeserving. In such situations there is a trade-off between two types of mistakes; false positives, i.e. giving to someone who is not deserving, and false negatives, i.e. not giving to someone who is deserving. We present the results from the first experimental study of how people make trade-offs between these mistakes. We examine the behavior of a representative sample of 2000 participants from the US and Norway, who were asked to distribute a sum of money between two groups of workers. In the first group all workers had done an assignment, but in the second group a number of the workers had falsely reported to have done the assignment. The willingness to equalize income between the two groups is decreasing in the number cheaters in the second group, but a large majority of the spectators are false negative averse in the sense that they are more concerned with avoiding false negatives than with avoiding false positives. We also find that the aversion to false negatives is related to political preferences and nationality, with left-wing voters and Norwegians being significantly more likely to be false negative averse than right-wing voters and Americans.

Media coverage of labour immigration to Norway: A case of non-reciprocal negativity (Cornelius Cappelen; Eskil Le Bruyn Goldeng; Tor Midtbø, Jannike Gottschalk Ballo)

This study examines the Norwegian print media’s coverage of intra-EU labour immigration. Focus is on negativity and conflict and the particular policy issues that go into these frames. We expect a gloomy portrayal of labour immigration due to not only traditional media negativity, but also due to an ethnic blame discourse as well as high standards in regard to labour rights. However, because the labour immigrants lack resources to engage in a “framing war” and good working conditions is something more or less all Norwegians take for granted, the media coverage is not predicted to be particularly conflictual. To test these expectations, we analyse more than thirty thousand news articles collected from the Norwegian media archive, Atekst over a 12 year period. The results from supervised and unsupervised techniques square quite well with our expectations: A large part of the coverage is negative while only a small portion is conflictual.