Building Nations through Shared Experiences: Evidence from African Football

Emilio Depetris-Chauvin, Ruben Durante and Filipe Campante

American Economic Review, 2020, vol. 110, issue 5, 1572-1602

Abstract: We examine whether shared collective experiences help build a national identity, by looking at the impact of national football teams' victories in sub-Saharan Africa. We find that individuals surveyed in the days after an important victory of their country's national team are 37 percent less likely to identify primarily with their ethnic group, and 30 percent more likely to trust other ethnicities, than those interviewed just before. Crucially, national team achievements also reduce violence: countries that (barely) qualified to the Africa Cup of Nations experience less civil conflict (9 percent fewer episodes) in the following months than countries that (barely) did not.

JEL-codes: D74 J15 L83 O15 O17 Z21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (100)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Building Nations Through Shared Experiences: Evidence from African Football (2018)
Working Paper: Building Nations Through Shared Experiences: Evidence from African Football (2017)
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DOI: 10.1257/aer.20180805

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