Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/279360 
Year of Publication: 
2023
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 10609
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
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.
Subjects: 
ethnic civil war
culture
linguistic distance
Africa
Bantu expansion
JEL: 
D74
Z10
O55
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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