@inproceedings{Sudekum2010Dialects,
abstract = {We investigate whether time-persistent cultural borders impede economic exchange across regions of the same country. To measure cultural differences we evaluate, for the first time in economics, linguistic micro-data about phonological and grammatical features of German dialects. These data are taken from a unique linguistic survey conducted between 1879 and 1888 in 45,000 schools. Matching this information to 439 current German regions, we construct a dialect similarity matrix. Using a gravity analysis, we show that current cross-regional migration is positively affected by historical dialect similarity. This suggests that cultural identities formed in the past still influence economic exchange today.},
address = {Frankfurt a. M.},
author = {Jens S\"{u}dekum and Stephan Heblich and Oliver Falck and Alfred Lameli},
copyright = {http://www.econstor.eu/dspace/Nutzungsbedingungen},
keywords = {R23; Z10; J61; 330; Dialects; Language; Culture; Internal migration; Gravity; Germany},
language = {eng},
number = {C13-V1},
publisher = {Verein f\"{u}r Socialpolitik},
series = {Beitr\"{a}ge zur Jahrestagung des Vereins f\"{u}r Socialpolitik 2010: \"{O}konomie der Familie - Session: Cultural Influences on Economic Behaviour},
title = {Dialects, Cultural Identity, and Economic Exchange},
url = {http://hdl.handle.net/10419/37364},
year = {2010}
}
