Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP7478
Authors: Klaus Desmet; Ignacio Ortuno-Ortin; Romain Wacziarg
Abstract: This paper proposes a new method to measure ethnolinguistic diversity and offers new results linking such diversity with a range of political economy outcomes -- civil conflict, redistribution, economic growth and the provision of public goods. We use linguistic trees, describing the genealogical relationship between the entire set of 6,912 world languages, to compute measures of fractionalization and polarization at different levels of linguistic aggregation. By doing so, we let the data inform us on which linguistic cleavages are most relevant, rather than making ad hoc choices of linguistic classifications. We find drastically different effects of linguistic diversity at different levels of aggregation: deep cleavages, originating thousands of years ago, lead to measures of diversity that are better predictors of civil conflict and redistribution than those that account for more recent and superficial divisions. The opposite pattern holds when it comes to the impact of linguistic diversity on growth and public goods provision, where finer distinctions between languages matter.
Keywords: Civil Conflict; Economic Growth; Ethnolinguistic Cleavages; Ethnolinguistic Diversity; Language Trees; Public Goods; Redistribution
JEL Codes: H1; N4; O4; O5
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| deep linguistic cleavages (F55) | civil conflict (D74) |
| deep linguistic cleavages (F55) | redistribution (H23) |
| superficial divisions (Y80) | civil conflict (D74) |
| superficial divisions (Y80) | redistribution (H23) |
| finer linguistic distinctions (Y80) | economic growth (O49) |
| linguistic fractionalization at lower aggregation levels (F12) | economic growth (O49) |
| linguistic fractionalization (F12) | probability of conflict (D74) |
| deep cleavages (F12) | redistribution (H23) |
| superficial divisions (Y80) | public goods provision (H41) |