with Vitaliy Kuzeyev
Published in American Journal of Political Science 51(3), 51(3):
620-639, July 2007
( PDF
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Does fractionalization change over (short periods of) time? If so, are
there any substantial implications for economic
performance? To answer such questions, we construct a new panel data set
with measures of ethnic, linguistic, and religious
fractionalization for 26 former communist countries covering the period
from 1989 to 2002. Our fractionalization measures
show that transition economies became more ethnically homogeneous over
such a short period of time, although the same
did not happen for linguistic and religious diversity. In line with the
most recent literature, there seems to be no effect of
(exogenous) diversity on macroeconomic performance (that is, on per capita
GDP growth). However, we find that dynamic
(endogenous) ethnic diversity is negatively related to growth (although
this is still not the case for linguistic and religious
diversity). These findings are robust to different specifications, polarization
measures, and instrument sets as well as to a
composite index of ethnic-linguistic-religious fractionalization.