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A0775
Title: Local population diversity Authors:  Marc Klemp - University of Copenhagen (Denmark) [presenting]
Oded Galor - Brown University (United States)
Abstract: Recent research has established that population diversity has had a profound effect on economic productivity over the course of human history. However, existing research is based on aggregate national level and ethnic level data and may confound the effects of unobserved national or ethnic characteristics with those of population diversity. Furthermore, the effect of within-ethnicity local diversity on long-run local development is unexplored. Accounting for unobserved national and ethnic characteristics, the effect of population diversity on long-run local development within a single nation and ethnicity is estimated. Focusing on the Canadian province Quebec, a novel measure of population diversity is developed which is based on the genetic distances between all pairs of individuals in the population as derived from comprehensive data on the genealogy of the entire historical population. Furthermore, the exogenous variation in local population diversity caused by the pattern of settlement of New France in the 17th century is exploited, and the effects of population diversity on the level of socioeconomic development two centuries later are estimated. Moreover, the persistence of local diversity, as well as the interaction effects of household-level and local-level diversity on individual socioeconomic prosperity, are exploited.