our results differ from those in Austria when it comes to hate crimes. There we find significant effects of the refugee inflow. A potential factor driving the difference in results is the economic and social composition of Germany versus Upper Austria. The effects in Germany are concentrated in areas with high deprivation, mainly in East Germany, which do not compare economically and socially to Upper Austria.

# **5.4 Relation to Other Recent Findings on Forced Displacement and Social Cohesion**

Our findings complement those of several recent studies on Forced Displacement and Social Cohesion. Aksoy and Ginn (2022) carry out an analysis that is similar to ours. Based on survey data from 14 countries, they find virtually no effect of the local presence of refugees on the attitudes of natives. This is consistent with our findings based on high-quality panel data in Germany. This study suggests that refugee inflows of the magnitude we have seen in recent years do not fundamentally change the social fabric of host countries. Complementary evidence is also provided for three East African countries in Betts et al. (2022). The authors show that the interaction between natives and refugees has no significant impact on attitudes towards refugees in the host population. However, there is a positive correlation between the ethnolinguistic proximity between the refugee and host population. This result highlights a gap in the literature: not only is the evidence on migration and social cohesion mixed, but we also lack knowledge of the underlying transmission mechanisms. Does immigration affect social cohesion through the local presence of migrants, through the media, or through other channels?

Our evidence on anti-immigrant violence suggests that the effect of refugee inflows on social cohesion is not uniformly zero in the population. It is rather the case that refugee inflows affect the behavior of certain groups. This evidence is consistent with the results for Sub-Saharan Africa in Coniglio et al. (2022). The authors show that the establishment of a refugee camp increases the likelihood of an armed conflict and the frequency of protests in an area. Similar to our findings on anti-immigrant violence in Germany. the authors show that the effect on conflict wanes after two years. this suggests that the effect of refugee inflows on violence or conflict is rather short-lived. Another study on East Africa by Zhou et al. (2022) paints a more optimistic picture. Using data from Uganda – one of the major host countries in Africa – the authors show that the inflow of refugees from South Sudan led to a significant improvement in local economic development and the provision of public goods such as schools and health clinics. However, these positive effects did not translate into more favorable attitudes towards immigrants.

Finally, our paper relates to work by Muller ̈ et al. (2022) on Switzerland and Murard (2022) on Greece. Both papers highlight the importance of taking a long-run perspective. While our study can only analyse short-run effects, it is important to re-evaluate the consequences of the 2015 inflow in Germany in years if not decades to come. The study on Switzerland exploits the random assignment of refugees to cantons and documents a variety of effects over a 20-year period. The most important ones are that a high unemployment rate at arrival slows down the labor market integration of refugees, whereas more hostile attitudes among the host country population accelerate the integration. It remains to be seen whether similar effects emerge among recently arrived asylum seekers in Germany. Murard (2022) provides an optimistic picture on the long-run effects of forced 26