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The Employment Effects of Ethnic Politics

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  • Amodio, Francesco

    (McGill University)

  • Chiovelli, Giorgio

    (Universidad de Montevideo)

  • Hohmann, Sebastian

    (Stockholm School of Economics)

Abstract

This paper studies the labor market consequences of ethnic politics in African democracies. We combine geo-referenced data from 15 countries, 32 parliamentary elections, 62 political parties, 243 ethnic groups, 2,200 electoral constituencies, and 400,000 individuals. We implement a regression discontinuity design that compares individuals from ethnicities connected to parties at the margin of electing a local representative in the national parliament. We find that having a local ethnic politician in parliament increases the likelihood of being employed by 2-3 percentage points. We hypothesize that this effect originates from strategic interactions between ethnic politicians and traditional leaders, the latter retaining the power to allocate land and agricultural jobs in exchange for votes. The available evidence supports this hypothesis. First, the employment effect is concentrated in the historical homelands of ethnicities with strong pre-colonial institutions. Second, individuals from connected ethnicities are more likely to be employed in agriculture, and in those countries where customary land tenure is officially recognized by national legislation. Third, they are also more likely to identify traditional leaders as partisan, and as being mainly responsible for the allocation of land. Evidence shows that ethnic politics shapes the distribution of productive resources across sectors and ethnic groups.

Suggested Citation

  • Amodio, Francesco & Chiovelli, Giorgio & Hohmann, Sebastian, 2019. "The Employment Effects of Ethnic Politics," IZA Discussion Papers 12818, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
  • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12818
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    Cited by:

    1. Elias Papaioannou, 2020. "A Comment on: “State Capacity, Reciprocity, and the Social Contract” by Timothy Besley," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(4), pages 1351-1358, July.
    2. Asatryan, Zareh & Baskaran, Thushyanthan & Birkholz, Carlo & Gomtsyan, David, 2021. "Favoritism and firms: Micro evidence and macro implications," ZEW Discussion Papers 21-031, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    ethnic politics; employment; democracy; traditional leaders; Africa;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J70 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - General
    • O10 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - General
    • P26 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist and Transition Economies - - - Property Rights
    • Q15 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Land Ownership and Tenure; Land Reform; Land Use; Irrigation; Agriculture and Environment

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