Dialects, Cultural Identity, and Economic Exchange

descriptionPublicationkeyboard_double_arrow_right Article , Research , Conference object , Preprint , Report 01 Jan 2010 Spain, United Kingdom English Publisher:Elsevier BVJournal:SSRN Electronic Journal (eissn: 1556-5068,

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Authors: Falck, Oliver; Heblich, Stephan; Lameli, Alfred; Sudekum, Jens;

Dialects, Cultural Identity, and Economic Exchange

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Abstract

It has long been argued that economic phenomena are affected by culture. However, the causal effect of cultural ties on economic exchange is difficult to identify, chiefly because cultural ties are endogenous to the current level of economic exchange, and because it is hard to separate culture from other influences. In this paper, we address these issues by using a novel measure for cultural identity—historical dialect differences across regions of the same country. We evaluate linguistic micro-data from a unique language survey conducted between 1879 and 1888 in about 45,000 German schools. The recorded geography of dialects comprehensively reflects local cultural differences that have been evolving for centuries and provides an ideal opportunity to isolate cultural costs from other barriers to economic exchange. In a gravity analysis, we then show that cross-regional migration flows in the period 2000–2006 are positively affected by historical dialect similarity, a finding that indicates highly time-persistent cultural borders that impede economic exchange even at a fine geographical scale.

Countries

Spain, United Kingdom

Related Organizations

University of Bristol
United Kingdom
University of Duisburg-Essen
Germany
University of Barcelona
Spain
Centre for Economic Policy Research
United Kingdom
Philipps-University of Marburg
Germany

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Keywords

R23: Urban, Sprache, gravity, internal migration, culture, language, dialects, Germany, IMPACT, Dialectology, Culture, EMIGRATION, DIVERSITY, Real Estate, R23, Z10: Cultural Economics, Emigració i immigració, Germany, Rural, Language, Dialects, TASTE HETEROGENEITY, ddc:330, Regional Labor Markets, BOUNDARIES, Dialectologia, dialects, Wirtschaftswissenschaften, Regional, Internal migration, Interregionaler Handel, INSTITUTIONS, Immigrant Workers, Gravitationsmodell, Schätzung, 330, internal migration, MIGRATION, Population, Gravity, Economic Anthropology: General, Identitat lingüística, Economic Sociology, Linguistic identity, Política cultural, and Transportation Economics: Regional Migration, Deutschland, Cultural policy, language, Neighborhood Characteristics, Kulturpsychologie, dialects, language, culture, internal migration, gravity, Germany, TRADE, culture, gravity, J61: Geographic Labor Mobility, Binnenwanderung, Z10, DISTANCE, J61, Cultural relations, Human geography, Emigration and immigration, Dialects, language, culture, internal migration, gravity, Germany, jel: jel:J61, jel: jel:R23, jel: jel:Z10

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