Fractionalization, Rent Seeking, and Economic Freedom

Bonnie Wilson and Jac Heckelman

Working Papers from Saint Louis University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Diversity is often thought to create conflict and harm economic institutions. We hypothesize, however, that the impact of diversity is conditional on political institutions, and may be negative in some settings but positive in others, due to differences in the nature of rent seeking in different regimes. To test this hypothesis, we estimate the impact of diversity on economic freedom, conditional on the level of political rights. We find that the marginal impact of ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity on economic freedom is positive in the most democratic nations, and that the marginal impact of ethnic diversity is negative in the most autocratic nations. Our results suggest that the nature of the relation between diversity and economic institutions may be more complicated than prior literature conveys.

Keywords: fractionalization; economic freedom; special-interest groups; economic policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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