CSI’s Inequality Discussion Groups bring together Cornell faculty and graduate students from around campus to discuss and improve their in-progress research.

Title: Government Mandates, Manager Anticipatory Compliance, and a Partisan Filter in Enforcement Expectation

Abstract: Government mandates (e.g., laws, executive orders) are often initially change-prone and subject to legal contestation. Yet, some managers promptly comply despite uncertainty regarding mandate legality and scope. Less is known about the drivers of managers’ anticipatory compliance decisions. Studying this, we examine U.S. President Trump’s 2017 “Muslim ban” executive order, which sought to ban U.S. entry for immigrants from seven majority-Muslim countries. Leveraging government administrative records on employer-sponsored immigrant work authorization applications, we analyze managers’ response to the ban through anticipatory compliance (voluntary application withdrawal). Using a difference-in-differences analysis, we find withdrawal rates increased from 0.3 to 8.5 percent for immigrants from targeted majority Muslim countries in the year after the ban, relative to the year before, peaking at 29 percent. We find that this withdrawal increase is not driven by broad anti-Muslim bias, or a partisan imperative to demonstrate timely responsiveness. Rather, analyses indicate the presence of a partisan filter in enforcement expectation: Manager withdrawals from Republican-leaning employers increased gradually and peaked with the U.S. Supreme Court’s willingness to consider the Muslim Ban’s legality, which occurred in the 5-6 months after the Ban’s announcement.  Findings emphasize the capacity of government to shape labor market dynamics through (even legally-contested) mandates, and the importance of accounting for employer ideology in anticipatory compliance decisions.