Diversity, Immigration, and Redistribution

Immigration and product diversity

We study the effects of immigration on the diversity of consumption choices. Data from California in the 1990s indicate that immigration is associated with fewer stand-alone retail stores and a greater number of large and in particular big-box retailers—evidence that likely contradicts a diversityenhancing effect of immigration. In contrast, focusing on the restaurant sector for which we can be...

Linguistic Diversity and Redistribution

This paper investigates the effect of linguistic diversity on redistribution in a broad crosssection of countries. We use the notion of “linguistic distances” and show that the commonly used fractionalization index, which ignores linguistic distances, yields insignificant results. However, once distances between languages are accounted for, linguistic diversity has both a statistically and econ...

Peripheral Diversity and Redistribution∗

This paper investigates the effect of ethnolinguistic conflict on redistribution. The analysis focuses on the conflict arising between “peripheral” minority groups and a dominant “center”. We propose an index of linguistic conflict that (i) encompasses both diversity and polarization, and (ii) accounts for the distance between lanuguages. Our results suggest that linguistic diversity is a bette...

Social Complexity of Immigration and Diversity

Ethnic Diversity and Preferences for Redistribution: Reply

In a comment to Dahlberg, Edmark and Lundqvist (2012), Nekby and Pettersson-Lidbom (2012) argue (i) that the refugee placement program should be measured with contracted rather than actually placed refugees, and claim that the correlation between the two measures is insignificant and close to zero; (ii) that instead of using the rotating individual panel, we should have used the full cross-sect...