Fees for administrative procedures may be regarded as compensation for bureaucratic efforts, but also as a means to shape their usage (Grohs et al. 2013): the demand for bureaucratic activities can be increased or decreased by lower or higher fees. In the policy field of citizenship acquisition, fees have long be criticised for supressing potential naturalisations (e.g. de Groot 1989), although there is no cross-national statistical evidence for such effects. While naturalisation policies are most often studied as residence, civic integration, or good conduct requirements and their effects on naturalisation outcomes, there is only little attention devoted to naturalisation fees. In this paper, I aim to investigate to which extent naturalisation fees can account for cross-national differences in naturalisation rates in the Western Europe over the period of 1995-2014. Controlling for migration patterns and other naturalisation requirements, I test whether fees can be regarded as instruments to shape naturalisation outcomes. To conclude, the paper argues that more research is needed to focus on potential selective effects of naturalisation fees, e.g. as supressing the naturalisation of immigrants with low incomes while not shaping the naturalisation of immigrants with more resources. This discussion of fees as policy instruments is not constrained to citizenship acquisition at all, as many administrative procedures in the field of immigrant integration may be subject to fees, such as the issuing of residence permits or language skill certificates.
