Public Goods and Ethnic Divisions
Reza Baqir,
William Easterly and
Alberto Alesina
Scholarly Articles from Harvard University Department of Economics
Abstract:
We present a model that links heterogeneity of preferences across ethnic groups in a city to the amount and type of public goods the city supplies. We test the implications of the model with three related data sets: U. S. cities, U. S. metropolitan areas, and U. S. urban counties. Results show that the shares of spending on productive public goods—education, roads, sewers and trash pickup—in U. S. cities (metro areas/urban counties) are inversely related to the city's (metro area's/county's) ethnic fragmentation, even after controlling for other socioeconomic and demographic determinants. We conclude that ethnic conflict is an important determinant of local public finances.
Date: 1999
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Published in Quarterly Journal of Economics
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http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4551797/alesina_publicgoods.pdf (application/pdf)
Related works:
Journal Article: Public Goods and Ethnic Divisions (1999) 
Working Paper: Public goods and ethnic divisions (1999) 
Working Paper: Public Goods and Ethnic Divisions (1997) 
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hrv:faseco:4551797
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