"Love thy neighbour"? The effect of income and language differences on votes for municipal secessions

Abstract

This paper studies voters’ preferences on municipal borders in a setting with cohabiting linguistic communities. It takes advantage of unique data from referendum results in the Canadian province of Quebec in 2004, which allow a direct investigation of voter preferences. I find that differences in income and language affect the likelihood of secession. Notably, I also find that these effects are interdependent, suggesting that the support for a local secession is affected to some degree by out-group aversion. Finally, I find that voters are willing to pay additional taxes to live in their jurisdiction of choice.