The Geography of Linguistic Diversity and the Provision of Public Goods

Joseph Gomes, Klaus Desmet and Ignacio Ortuño-Ortín

No 07/2016, NCID Working Papers from Navarra Center for International Development, University of Navarra

Abstract: This paper theoretically analyzes and empirically investigates the importance of local interaction between individuals of different linguistic groups for the provision of public goods at the national level. Depending on whether local interaction mitigates or reinforces antagonism towards other groups, the micro-founded theory we develop predicts that a country's provision of public goods (i) decreases in its overall linguistic fractionalization, and (ii) either increases or decreases in how much individuals locally learn about other groups. After constructing a 5 km by 5 km geographic dataset on language use for 223 countries, we compute measures of overall fractionalization and local learning, and investigate their relation to public good provision at the country level. While overall fractionalization worsens outcomes, we find a positive causal relation between local learning and public goods. Local mixing therefore mitigates the negative impact of a country's overall linguistic fractionalization. An IV strategy shows that this result is not driven by the possible endogenous spatial distribution of language speakers within countries.

JEL-codes: D7 D74 H4 H5 J15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2016-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gro, nep-lab, nep-mig, nep-pbe and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://ncid.unav.edu/download/file/fid/1390 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The geography of linguistic diversity and the provision of public goods (2020)
Working Paper: The Geography of Linguistic Diversity and the Provision of Public Goods (2018)
Working Paper: The Geography of Linguistic Diversity and the Provision of Public Goods (2016)
Working Paper: The Geography of Linguistic Diversity and the Provision of Public Goods (2016)
Working Paper: The geography of linguistic diversity and the provision of public goods (2016)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nva:unnvaa:wp07-2016

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NCID Working Papers from Navarra Center for International Development, University of Navarra
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().