n the literature about the determinants of attitudes towards immigration,

some authors emphasize the role of economic factors, while others argue that

attitudes are mostly determined by noneconomic factors. This paper evaluates

the relative importance of the two. We estimate a structural model of individual

attitudes towards immigration, accounting for unobserved individual factors, and

use this model to carry out a decomposition analysis of attitudes in 20 European

countries. We find that economic mechanisms are significant determinants of

attitudes, but that other (noneconomic) factors play a more decisive role in the

relation between individual education levels and attitudes to immigratio