to seminar participants at Harvard University (Saguaro Seminar, October 1998), Stanford University, and Ente Einuadi for very useful comments. We also thank Erzo Luttrner for sharing data and Spencer Glendon for help with data sources. This research is supported by an NSF grant to the NBER. We are grateful to both organizations for their support. Alesina also gratefully acknowledges financial support from the
We survey and asses the literature on the positive and negative effects of ethnic diversity on economic policies and outcomes. Our focus is on countries, on cities in developed countries (the US) and on villages in developing countries. We also consider the endogenous formation of political jurisdictions and we highlight several open issues in need of further research.
This paper studies both theoretically and empirically the determinants of group formation and of the degree of participation when the population is heterogeneous, both in terms of income and race or etimicity. We are especially interested in whether and how much the degree of heterogeneity in communities influences the amount of participation in different types of groups.Using survey data on group membership and data on US localities, we find that, after controlling for many individual characteristics, participation in social activities is significantly lower in more unequal and in more racially or ethnically fragmented localities. We also find that those individuals who express views against racial mixing are less prone to participate in the groups the more racially heterogeneous their community is.
We survey and assess the literature on the positive and negative effects of ethnic diversity on economic policies and outcomes. Our focus is on communities of different size and organizational structure, such as countries, cities in developed countries, and villages and groups in developing countries. We also consider the endogenous formation of political jurisdictions and highlight several open issues in need of further research, in particular the endogenous formation of ethnic identity and the measurement of ethnic diversity.
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Documents inThe Research Department (RES) produces a quarterly newsletter, IDEA (Ideas for Development in the Americas), as well as working papers and books on diverse economic issues. To obtain a complete list of RES publications, and read or download them please visit our web site at: http://www.iadb.org/res.3 Abstract * This paper focuses on fertility choices in Brazil, a country where soap operas (novelas) portray families that are much smaller than in reality, to study the effects of television on individual behavior. Using Census data for the period 1970-1991, the paper finds that women living in areas covered by the Globo signal have significantly lower fertility. The effect is strongest for women of lower socioeconomic status and for women in the central and late phases of their fertility cycle. Finally, the paper provides evidence that novelas, rather than television in general, affected individual choices.
We survey and asses the literature on the positive and negative effects of ethnic diversity on economic policies and outcomes. Our focus is on countries, on cities in developed countries (the US) and on villages in developing countries. We also consider the endogenous formation of political jurisdictions and we highlight several open issues in need of further research.
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