Racially biased outcomes have increasingly been recognized as a problem that can infect software algorithms and datasets of all types. Digital platforms, in particular, are organizing ever greater portions of social, political, and economic life. This essay examines and organizes current...

Some studies of social science, such as Robert Putnam's seminal article, E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century, suggest that immigration undermines voluntary contributions to public goods because it leads to ethnic diversity, which erodes social trust. In this...

This paper shows that the level of deforestation in Indonesia is positively related to the degree of ethnic fractionalization at the district level. To identify a casual relation we exploit the exogenous timing of variations in the level of ethnic heterogeneity due to the creation of new...

How does diversity in government impact public good provision? To address this question, we construct a novel dataset linking the ethnicity of California city council candidates to election outcomes and expenditure decisions. We then study how the narrow election of a candidate whose ethnicity...

We investigate how changes in the administrative-territorial structure affect ethnic voting. We present an event study design that exploits the 2010 constitutional reform in Kenya, which substantially increased the number of primary administrative regions. We find (i) strong evidence for a...

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...

A large and growing literature links high levels of ethnic diversity to low levels of public goods provision. Yet while the empirical connection between ethnic heterogeneity and the underprovision of public goods is widely accepted, there is little consensus on the specific mechanisms through...

Ethnic diversity plays a crucial role in shaping national economic and social policy. A change in the ethnic composition of a country affects citizens' everyday life and social environment and may challenge present societal values, such as solidarity with and trust in fellowcitizens. Based on...

The empirical evidence suggests that the resource rich countries tend to have poor economic perfor- mance and higher rent seeking. In this paper, we develop a general equilibrium model explaining why natural resources turn out to be a curse in an economy divided into two classes: elite and...