Pioneer investigations of the economic consequences of ethnic diversity – a ubiquitous feature of African societies – found a strong and negative correlation. The present paper revisits this “diversity burden” conjecture, by using (1) newly available, better-quality data-sets allowing for sub-national estimations and multiple robustness checks, and (2) a new instrument, a pre-colonial measure of ethnic diversity, to explore causality. We find that the impact of ethnic diversity depends on the public good and the specification considered. Overall, completely heterogeneous societies produce 3 percent less public goods than their homogeneous counterparts, a negative but more limited effect than previously found.
The Chairs Armand Peugeot, Energy and Prosperity, and Climate Economics are organizing, on December 6th an 7th, 2023, the 10th edition of the annual international Conference on Mobility Challenges.