Automation, Globalization and the (Mis)perception of Risks: New Evidence from Six Advanced Economies

A growing literature investigates the political implications of automation and globali- zation, lacking an explanation for the similarity between the nationalist stances trig- gered by both economic changes. I provide an empirical explanation based on risk perception, showing that automation «losers» misattribute the cause of their material concerns toward migrants. I put forward an interpretation of misattribution based on status loss against which I test a rational-choice hypothesis. I run multivariate models on a novel survey dataset testing the effects of the regional, sectoral, and occupational impact of automation and globalization on risk perception. I find that the exposure to automation is associated with the fear of migrants, regardless of other individual vul- nerabilities. On the contrary, the exposure to imports from China only weakly and positively correlate with fear of globalization.