What’s the Melting Pot Worth? Multiculturalism and House Prices
Rachel Cho, Hisham Farag, Christoph Görtz, Danny McGowan, Huyen Nguyen, Max Schröder
IWH Discussion Papers,
No. 11,
2025
Abstract
Is there a multicultural neighborhood price premium? We exploit plausibly exogenous variation in British colonization patterns in Northern Ireland during the early 1600s which created neighborhoods of varying religious composition that persists until today. These religious groups are culturally distinct, but are observationally equivalent ethnically and socioeconomically. A standard deviation increase neighborhood-level multiculturalism raises house prices by 9.6%. Multiculturalism raises property prices by increasing asset liquidity and housing demand as a wider spectrum of society demand houses in these areas. The findings and mechanism contrast sharply with prior evidence showing negative relationships due to homophily, social networks, and identification challenges.
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Social Connections and Information Leakage: Evidence from Target Stock Price Run-up in Takeovers
Iftekhar Hasan, Lin Tong, An Yan
Journal of Financial Research,
No. 2,
2025
Abstract
Does information leakage in a target's social networks increase its stock price prior to a merger announcement? Evidence reveals that a target with more social connections indeed experiences a higher pre-announcement price run-up. This effect does not exist during or after the merger announcement, or in windows ending two months before the announcement. It is more pronounced among targets with severe asymmetric information, and weaker when the information about the upcoming merger is publicly available prior to the announcement. It is also weaker in expedited deals such as tender offers.
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IWH Alumni The IWH maintains contact with its former employees worldwide. We involve our alumni in our work and keep them informed, for example, with a newsletter. We also plan…
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Media Response Archive 2021 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 December 2021 IWH: Ausblick auf Wirtschaftsjahr 2022 in Sachsen mit Bezug auf IWH-Prognose zu Ostdeutschland: "Warum Sachsens…
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East Germany
The Nasty Gap 30 years after unification: Why East Germany is still 20% poorer than the West Dossier In a nutshell The East German economic convergence process is hardly…
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Job Market Candidates
Job Market Candidates Marius Fourné Marius Fourné is a PhD candidate in Economics at the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH) and Martin Luther University of…
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Frequently Asked Questions Answers to the most frequently asked questions about doctoral studies at IWH. What are the IWH's main areas of research? Researchers at IWH are leading…
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Networks Central-German Doctoral Program Economics (CGDE) The programme connects students with partner universities, providing access to a broad academic network. International…
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Department Profiles
Research Profiles of the IWH Departments All doctoral students are allocated to one of the four research departments (Financial Markets – Laws, Regulations and Factor Markets –…
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Past Events
Past Events 14. CompNet Annual Conference (Vilnius, 25-26 September 2025) The 14th CompNet Annual Conference, co-hosted with the Bank of Lithuania, took place on 25–26 September…
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