The effects of cultural diversity on innovation and public provision of schooling: Evidence from nineteenth century Prussia

研究文化多样性的成本和收益的文献越来越多。一方面，由于不同种族、语言和宗教群体在专业化方面的互补性，文化多样性可能会提高生产率。另一方面，由于不同的偏好，多样性可能导致较低的再分配和公共产品的提供不足。该项目旨在为19世纪普鲁士特定背景下文化多样性的成本和收益提供新的经验证据。第一个目标是调查文化多样性在创新中的作用。特别是，我们的目标是确定宗教多样性对专利活动的影响。这是第一个在德国工业革命等激烈技术进步时期探索这种关系的项目。事实上，普鲁士是研究宗教多样性对创新活动影响的理想实验室。由于历史原因，由于新教徒、天主教徒和犹太人(加上其他较小的宗教团体)的同居，普鲁士具有明显的宗教和种族异质性。利用1815年人口宗教构成的县级普查数据，我们可以尝试识别1871年宗教多样性的外生变异，从而估计其对创新活动的因果效应。第二个目标是揭示多样性对创新活动影响的机制。通过使用1882年普鲁士职业普查中报告的数十个行业的宗教构成数据，这是可能的。这使我们能够了解不同文化之间的互补性是否只对特定工业部门的创新活动产生积极影响。此外，我们还将调查溢出效应的存在。特别是，我们可以测试文化多样性是否起到了技术知识溢出的渠道的作用，分析多样性在多大程度上帮助了技术和地理相关行业的技术传播。最后，我们想研究语言和宗教分裂对公共教育提供的影响。语言上不同群体的共存可能造成了在提供的公共教育类型方面的偏好冲突。这反过来可能导致公共教育的提供不足，表现为新学校的数量较少或教师数量较少。通过使用关于小学生在家使用的语言及其宗教的新数据以及关于中央和地方公共教育支出的数据，我们希望评估宗教和语言多样性如何影响地方一级公立学校的资金筹措。

There is a growing literature which studies costs and benefits of cultural diversity. On the one hand, cultural diversity may increase productivity due to complementarity in specialization of different ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups. On the other hand, diversity may lead to lower redistribution and under-provision of public goods due to divergent preferences. This project aims to provide new empirical evidence on the costs and benefits of cultural diversity in the specific setting of nineteenth century Prussia.The first objective is to investigate the role of cultural diversity in innovation. In particular, we aim to identify the effect of religious diversity on patenting activity. This is the first project which explores this relationship for a period of intense technological progress such as the German industrial revolution. In fact, Prussia constitutes an ideal laboratory to study the effect of religious diversity on innovative activity. For historical reasons Prussia is characterized by a pronounced religious and ethnic heterogeneity due to the cohabitation of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews (plus other smaller religious groups). Using census data at the county level on the religious composition of the population in 1815, we can try to identify exogenous variation in religious diversity in 1871 and thus to estimate its causal effect on innovative activity.The second objective is to shed light on the mechanisms behind the effect of diversity on innovative activity. This is possible by using data on the religious composition of dozens of industries reported in the Prussian occupational census of 1882. This allows us to understand whether the complementarities between different cultures have a positive effect on innovative activity only for specific industrial sectors. In addition, we will also investigate the existence of spillover effects. In particular, we can test whether cultural diversity functioned as a channel for spillover of technological knowledge analyzing to what extent diversity helped the diffusion of technology across technologically and geographically related industries.Finally, we want to study the effect of linguistic and religious fractionalization on the provision of public education. The coexistence of linguistically heterogeneous groups might have created conflict of preferences with respect to the typology of public education to provide. This in turn might have led to an under-provision of public schooling in the form of a lower number of new school establishments or a lower number of teachers. By using new data on the language spoken by primary school pupils at home and on their religion and data on central and local expenditure on public education, we want to assess how religious and linguistic diversity affected the financing of public schools at the local level.