تنوع قومی و توسعه اقتصادی

This paper analyzes the role that different indices and dimensions of ethnicity play in the process of economic development. Firstly, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of alternative data sources for the construction of indices of religious and ethnic heterogeneity. Secondly, we compare the index of fractionalization and the index of polarization. We argue that an index of the family of discrete polarization measures is the adequate indicator to measure potential conflict. We find that ethnic (religious) polarization has a large and negative effect on economic development through the reduction of investment and the increase of government consumption and the probability of a civil conflict.

In recent years, there has been increasing interest in the economic consequences of ethnic heterogeneity. In many situations, ethnic polarization generates conflicts that could eventually lead to political instability and civil wars (CW), with long-lasting economic effects. In other cases, the potential conflict represented by an ethnically polarized society can affect negatively the rate of investment and induce rent-seeking behavior that increases public consumption. These situations—armed conflicts, reduced investment, or higher government consumption—have been shown to have a negative effect on economic development (Barro, 1991 and Tavares and Wacziarg, 2001). This paper analyzes the effects of ethnic heterogeneity on economic development. For this purpose, we compare the empirical performance of different dimensions of ethnicity as well as alternative indices to measure diversity and potential conflict. There is a growing body of literature on the relationship between ethnic diversity, the quality of institutions, and economic growth. Mauro (1995) shows that a high level of ethnolinguistic diversity implies a lower level of investment. Easterly and Levine (1997) show that ethnic diversity has a direct negative effect on economic growth. La Porta et al. (1999) suggest that ethnic diversity is one of the factors explaining the quality of government. Bluedorn (2001), based on the study of Easterly and Levine (1997), presents empirical evidence of democracy's positive role in ameliorating the negative growth effects of ethnic diversity. All these studies use the index of ethnolinguistic fractionalization (ELF), also called ELF, calculated using the data of the Atlas Narodov Mira (Taylor and Hudson, 1972).

This paper presents a measurement of religious and ethnic diversity and their effects on economic development. The first part of the paper discusses the construction of a database of religious and ethnic diversity for a large sample of countries. We consider the impact of different data sources and indicators on the measurement of heterogeneity. We also analyze the effect of alternative synthetic indices for religious and ethnic diversity. We argue that the index of polarization is better suited to capture the potential for conflict in a society than the traditional index of fractionalization. We show that polarization and fractionalization indices have positive and close relationship in homogeneous countries. However, for high levels of heterogeneity, the correlation between fractionalization and polarization indices is close to zero or even negative. The second part of the paper analyzes the effect of religious and ethnic diversity on economic development. Several papers have documented the negative effect of ethnic fractionalization on economic development. Many authors argue that the reason for that negative effect is that a high degree of ethnic fractionalization the increase potential conflict, which has negative effects on investment and increases rent seeking activities. Our results confirm that ethnolinguistic fractionalization has a direct negative effect on growth. However, we find no strong empirical justification to argue that the negative effect of fractionalization on growth is due to its impact on the indirect channels above mentioned. By contrast, our results suggest that an increase in social polarization has a negative effect on growth because it reduces the rate of investment and increases public consumption and the incidence of civil wars.