for helpful comments. We are also grateful to Kimiya Akhyani for providing very useful research assistance. Views presented are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the EBRD. All interpretations, errors, and omissions are our own. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

Understanding whether laws shape or simply reflect citizens' attitudes is important but empirically difficult. We provide new evidence on this question by studying the relationship between legal same-sex relationship recognition policies (SSRRPs) and attitudes towards sexual minorities in Europe. Using data from the European Social Surveys covering 2002-2016 and exploiting variation in the timing of SSRRPs across countries, we show that legal relationship recognition is associated with a statistically significant increase in favourable attitudes towards sexual minorities. These effects are widespread across demographic groups, emerge only after the policies are adopted, and are not observed for views on other social issues. Our results suggest that laws can exert a powerful influence on societal attitudes.

Most prior work on sexual orientation and labor market earnings has relied either on individual-level surveys with small samples of sexual minorities or on large samples of same-sex couples. For this study, the authors use a large individual-level data set from the United Kingdom that allows investigation of both constructs. They replicate the well-documented lesbian advantage and gay male penalty in couples-based comparisons but show that these effects are absent in similarly specified models of non-partnered workers. This finding suggests that couples-based samples overstate the true earnings differences attributable to a minority sexual orientation as well as that household specialization plays an important role in the lesbian earnings advantage. Results also show that no significant lesbian advantage or gay male penalty is observed in London. Finally, they find robust evidence that bisexual men earn significantly less than otherwise similar heterosexual men. The authors discuss how the effects reconcile with theories of specialization and discrimination.

Could robotization make the gender pay gap worse? We provide the first largescale evidence on the impact of industrial robots on the gender pay gap using data from 20 European countries. We show that robot adoption increases both male and female earnings but also increases the gender pay gap. Using an instrumental variable strategy, we find that a ten percent increase in robotization leads to a 1.8 percent increase in the gender pay gap. These results are mainly driven by countries with high levels of gender inequality and outsourcing destination countries. We then explore the mechanisms behind this e↵ect and find that our results can be explained by the fact that men at medium-and high-skill occupations disproportionately benefit from robotization (through a productivity e↵ect). We rule out the possibility that our results are driven by mechanical changes in the gender composition of the workforce nor by inflows or outflows from the manufacturing sector.

Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but IZA takes no institutional policy positions. The IZA research network is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity. The IZA Institute of Labor Economics is an independent economic research institute that conducts research in labor economics and offers evidence-based policy advice on labor market issues. Supported by the Deutsche Post Foundation, IZA runs the world's largest network of economists, whose research aims to provide answers to the global labor market challenges of our time. Our key objective is to build bridges between academic research, policymakers and society. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author.

We study the causal effect of local labor market conditions and attitudes towards immigrants at the time of arrival on refugees’ multi-dimensional integration outcomes (economic, linguistic, navigational, political, psychological, and social). Using a unique dataset on refugees, we leverage a centralized allocation policy in Germany where refugees were exogenously assigned to live in specific counties. We find that high initial local unemployment negatively affects refugees’ economic and social integration: they are less likely to be in education or employment and they earn less. We also show that favorable attitudes towards immigrants promote refugees’ economic and social integration. The results suggest that attitudes toward immigrants are as important as local unemployment rates in shaping refugees’ integration outcomes. Using a machine learning classifier algorithm, we find that our results are driven by older people and those with secondary or tertiary education. Our findings highlight the importance of both initial economic and social conditions for facilitating refugee integration, and have implications for the design of centralized allocation policies.

What will be political legacy of the Coronavirus pandemic? We find that epidemic exposure in an individual's impressionable years (ages 18 to 25) has a persistent negative effect on confidence in political institutions and leaders. We find similar negative effects on confidence in public health systems, suggesting that the loss of confidence in political leadership and institutions is associated with healthcare related policies at the time of the epidemic. In line with this argument, our results are mostly driven by individuals who experienced epidemics under weak governments with less capacity to act against the epidemic, disappointing their citizens. We provide evidence of this mechanism by showing that weak governments took longer to introduce policy interventions in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. These results imply that the Coronavirus may leave behind a long-lasting political scar on the current young generation ("Generation Z").

for helpful comments. We are also grateful to Kimiya Akhyani for providing very useful research assistance. Views presented are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the EBRD. All interpretations, errors, and omissions are our own. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.