Cultural diversity - in various forms - has in recent years turned into a prominent and relevant research and policy issue. There is an avalanche of studies across many disciplines that measure and analyse cultural diversity and its impacts. Based on different perspectives and features of the...

Cultural diversity – in various forms – has in recent years turned into a prominent and relevant research and policy issue. There is an avalanche of studies across many disciplines that measure and analyse cultural diversity and its impacts. Based on different perspectives and features of...

Are ethnic specialization and thus a downward sloping labor demand curve fundamental features of labor market competition between ethnic groups? In a general equilibrium model, this paper argues that spillover effects in skill acquisition and social distances between ethnic groups engender...

Expanding on the concept of ethnic human capital, the paper distinguishes between cultural assimilation compatible with persistent ethnic groups and assimilation through intermarriage and other mechanisms that blur distinctions and lead to the disappearance of ethnic identities. Economic...

This paper models the interaction between individuals' identity choices and redistribution. Both redistributive policies and identity choices are endogenous, and there might be multiple equilibria. The model is applied to ethnicity and social class. In an equilibrium with high taxes, the poor...

We develop a model of friendship formation that sheds light on segregation patterns observed in social and economic networks. Individuals come in different types and have type-dependent benefits from friendships; we examine the properties of a steady-state equilibrium of a matching process of...

We present a basic theoretical framework of ethnic identity, i.e., the level of immigrant's commitment to his or her host society as well as the immigrant's commitment to his or her home society. Our model can explain the emerging empirical literature which studies the effect of the immigrants'...

Mobile workers involve flows of labor and human capital and contribute to a more efficient allocation of resources. However, migration also changes relative wages, alters the distribution of skills and affects equality in the receiving society. The paper suggests that skilled immigration...

Recently, Constant, Gataullina, and Zimmermann (2009) established a new method to measure ethnic identity which they called the "ethnosizer". Using information on an individual's language, culture, social interactions, history of migration, and ethnic selfidentification, the method classifies...

The demographic history of the Jews in the Middle Ages may be characterized by two main phenomena: i) a sharp drop in the number of Jews until the beginning of the modern period, due mainly to conversions; and, ii) early urbanization. Until now, these features have been analyzed as primarily...