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The Political Economy of Ethnolinguistic Cleavages

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Author Info
Klaus Desmet
Ignacio Ortuño-Ortín
Romain Wacziarg

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Abstract

This paper proposes a new method to measure ethnolinguistic diversity and offers new results linking such diversity with a range of political economy outcomes -- civil conflict, redistribution, economic growth and the provision of public goods. We use linguistic trees, describing the genealogical relationship between the entire set of 6,912 world languages, to compute measures of fractionalization and polarization at different levels of linguistic aggregation. By doing so, we let the data inform us on which linguistic cleavages are most relevant, rather than making ad hoc choices of linguistic classifications. We find drastically different effects of linguistic diversity at different levels of aggregation: deep cleavages, originating thousands of years ago, lead to measures of diversity that are better predictors of civil conflict and redistribution than those that account for more recent and superficial divisions. The opposite pattern holds when it comes to the impact of linguistic diversity on growth and public goods provision, where finer distinctions between languages matter.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 15360.

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Date of creation: Sep 2009
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15360

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
H1 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government
N4 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, and Regulation
O4 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity
O5 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies

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  6. Alberto Alesina & Eliana La Ferrara, 2005. "Ethnic Diversity and Economic Performance," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 43(3), pages 762-800, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  16. José Garcia Montalvo & Marta Reynal-Querol, 2004. "Ethnic Polarization, Potential Conflict, and Civil Wars," Economics Working Papers 770, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Mar 2005. [Downloadable!]
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  18. Miguel, Edward & Gugerty, Mary Kay, 2005. "Ethnic diversity, social sanctions, and public goods in Kenya," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(11-12), pages 2325-2368, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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