蝌蚪网 Review
ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)
Cultural Distance and Ethnic Civil Conflict
蝌蚪网 Review
vol. 115,
no. 4, April 2025
(pp. 1338–68)
(Complimentary)
Abstract
Ethnically diverse countries are more prone to conflict, but why do some groups engage in conflict, while others do not? I show that civil conflict in Africa is explained by ethnic groups' cultural distance to the central government: an increase in cultural distance, proxied by linguistic distance, increases an ethnicity's propensity to fight over government power. To identify this effect, I leverage within-ethnicity variation in linguistic distance resulting from power transitions between ethnic groups over time. I provide evidence that the effects can be attributed to differences in preferences over both the allocation and the type of public goods.Citation
Guarnieri, Eleonora. 2025. "Cultural Distance and Ethnic Civil Conflict." 蝌蚪网 Review 115 (4): 1338–68. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20231087Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- D74 Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
- H41 Public Goods
- J15 Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
- N47 Economic History: Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation: Africa; Oceania
- O15 Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
- O17 Formal and Informal Sectors; Shadow Economy; Institutional Arrangements
- Z13 Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification