Ethno-religious diversity has the potential to affect long term development through a variety of mechanisms. Examples of these are labor specialization, institutional quality, and conflicts (see Alesina and La Ferrara (2005) for an overview). This session aims to bring together a collection of papers that will discuss these different mechanisms, in relation to various aspects of development – e.g. the provision of public goods, political stability, minority freedoms, and nation-state formation – for a variety of historical contexts.

Thus, the session will foster discussion on what has now become one of the central questions in economics and economic history: how does diversity affect development?

The session will feature papers that deal primarily with developing regions, or regions that were once developing, and at a local level. Methodologically speaking, the papers in this session will contrast the majority of existing studies, which are usually done for advanced countries and at aggregate, cross-country level.

With these aims in sight, Mark KOYAMA investigates 14th century Black Death pogroms to shed light on the factors determining when a minority group will face persecution. Luigi PASCALI analyses how the division of labor between the Jewish minority and the Christian majority affected the geography of anti-Semitism in six centuries of German history. Stelios MICHALOPOULOS tackles the question of persistence of ethnic and religious identity in Africa using census data from African countries. After documenting the extent of ethnic and religious endogamy, he explores how the economic and political landscape influences the inter-generational transmission of ethnoreligious identity. Leonard KUKIC analyses the impact of ethnic diversity on nation formation in socialist Yugoslavia, operating through the channel of ethnic intermarriage. Andrea PAPADIA studies the impact of ethnic diversity and slavery on public goods provision in Brazil in the late 19th and early 20th century.

References

Alesina, A., and E. La Ferrara (2005): “Ethnic Diversity and Economic Performance,” Journal of Economic Literature, 43(3), 762–800.