Dialects, Cultural Identity, and Economic Exchange

Falck, Oliver; Heblich, Stephan; Lameli, Alfred; Suedekum, Jens

doi:10.2139/ssrn.1562445

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Dialects, Cultural Identity, and Economic Exchange

CESifo Working Paper Series No. 2961

48 Pages Posted: 18 Mar 2010

See all articles by Oliver Falck

Oliver Falck

CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute) - Department Human Capital and Innovation

Stephan Heblich

University of Stirling - Department of Economics

Heinrich-Heine-University Duesseldorf, Duesseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE); Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute); Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

There are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: February 2010

Abstract

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 taken from a unique linguistic survey conducted between 1879 and 1888 in 45,000 schools. Matching this information to 439 current German regions, we construct a dialect similarity matrix. Using a gravity analysis, we show that current cross-regional migration is positively affected by historical dialect similarity. This suggests that cultural identities formed in the past still influence economic exchange today.

Keywords: dialects, language, culture, internal migration, gravity, Germany

JEL Classification: R23, Z10, J61

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Falck, Oliver and Heblich, Stephan and Lameli, Alfred and Südekum, Jens, Dialects, Cultural Identity, and Economic Exchange (February 2010). CESifo Working Paper Series No. 2961, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1562445 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1562445