RT Journal Article
T1 The geography of linguistic diversity and the provision of public goods
A1 Desmet, Klaus
A1 Gomes, Joseph Flavian
A1 Ortuño Ortín, Ignacio
AB This paper analyzes the importance of local interaction between individuals of different ethnolinguistic groupsfor the provision of public goods at the national level. The conceptual framework we develop suggests thata country’s public goods (i) decrease in its overall ethnolinguistic fractionalization, and (ii) either increase ordecrease in its local-global ethnolinguistic complementarity, a measure of how local interaction affects antagonismtowards other groups in the society at large. After constructing a 5 km by 5 km dataset on language use for 223countries, we empirically explore these theoretical predictions. While overall fractionalization worsens publicgoods outcomes, local interaction mitigates this negative association. Conditional on a country’s overall diversity,public goods outcomes are maximized when there are a few large-sized groups and the diversity of each locationmirrors that of the country as a whole.
PB Elsevier
SN 0304-3878
YR 2020
FD 2020-03-01
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10016/34812
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10016/34812
LA eng
NO Gomes gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Fundación Ramón Areces, and Ortuño-Ortín thanks the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness(grants ECO2013-42710-P and MDM 2014-0431).
DS e-Archivo
RD 27 jul. 2024