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...

Armed conflicts, natural disasters and infrastructure projects continue to force millions into migration. This is especially true for developing countries. After World War II, about 8 million ethnic Germans experienced a similar situation when forced to leave their homelands and settle within...

Why are better educated and more risk-friendly persons more mobile across regions? To answer this question, we use micro data on internal migrants from the German Socio- Economic Panel (SOEP) 2000-2006 and merge this information with a unique proxy for region-pair-specific cultural distances...