Economics Research Community Seminar – Dr Eleonora Guarnieri

Title: Cultural Distance and Ethnic Civil Conflict

Date: 13 December 2023

Time: 13:00-14:00

Location: NUBS.2.13

If you would like to attend, please register using the following link:

Cultural Distance and Ethnic Civil Conflict

Speaker: Dr Eleonora Guarnieri, Assistant Professor in Economics University of Exeter https://sites.google.com/view/eleonora-guarnieri

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 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.