Working Paper Series, Department of Economics, Uppsala University
No 2010:13:
Is tolerance good or bad for growth?
Niclas Berggren ()
and Mikael Elinder ()
Abstract: We investigate to what extent tolerance, as measured by
attitudes toward different types of neighbors, affects economic growth.
Data from the World Values Survey enable us to investigate tolerance–growth
relationships for 54 countries. We provide estimates based on
cross-sectional as well as panel-data regressions. In addition we test for
robustness with respect to model specification and sample composition.
Unlike previous studies, by Richard Florida and others, we find that
tolerance toward homosexuals is negatively related to growth. For tolerance
toward people of a different race, we do not find robust results, but the
sign of the estimated coefficients is positive, suggesting that inclusion
of people irrespective of race makes good use of productive capacity. We
propose mechanisms to explain these divergent findings, which clarify why
different kinds of tolerance may be of different economic importance.
Keywords: Tolerance; Growth; Diversity; Human Capital; Creativity; Innovation; (follow links to similar papers)
JEL-Codes: O40; Z13; (follow links to similar papers)
34 pages, August 17, 2010
Before downloading any of the electronic versions below
you should read our statement on
copyright.
Download GhostScript
for viewing Postscript files and the
Acrobat Reader for viewing and printing pdf files.
Full text versions of the paper:
wp201013.pdf 
Download Statistics
Questions (including download problems) about the papers in this series should be directed to Katarina Grönvall ()
Report other problems with accessing this service to Sune Karlsson ()
or Helena Lundin ().
Programing by
Design by Joachim Ekebom
