Gunes Gokmen

Cultural Distance and Interstate Conflicts

There are a number of interesting questions to explore in future research, and in this section we identify three of them. Firstly, in the present study we make the assumption that countries are culturally homogeneous, and therefore we identify cultural divides only across countries. As such we do not allow for within-country diversity. We are aware that this is a simplistic categorization, and some countries are fragmented into a multitude of ethnic groups; accordingly, a number of studies have explored whether ethnically diverse societies have a higher probability of ethnic conflicts, which may lead to civil war (e.g., Reynal-Querol, 2002; Montalvo & Reynal-Querol, 2005). Similarly, religion has always played a central role in social and economic issues, and religious affiliations can also affect the degree of cohesion within societies. Distances between ethnic groups are a very important factor for the incidence of conflict and a famous study by Fearon (2003) argues that to obtain indicators of cultural diversity within countries, we need to measure ethnic distances across groups. An important extension of this study would be therefore the inclusion of more refined measures of cultural distance between countries, where we explicitly take into account the relative weight that each ethnic (or religious) group has in relation to the others within each country. In other words, for each country-pair we could sum up the dyadic distance between each ethnic group, weighted by the proportion of citizens belonging to each group in each country. Secondly, and related to this last point,a geo-referenced analysis of cultural zones, where we identify geographic areas which are homogeneous in terms of identity, would allow us to explore interzone relations, rather than inter-country relations. By changing the unit of analysis and focusing on a more meaningful representation of cultural bound-

Minorities and Long-Run Development: Persistence of Armenian and Greek Influence in Turkey

Mass deportations and killings of Ottoman Armenians during WWI and the Greek-Turkish population exchange after the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922 were the two major events of the early 20th century that permanently changed the ethno-religious landscape of Anatolia. These events marked the end of centuries-long coexistence of the Muslim populations with the two biggest Christian communities of the region. These communities played a dominant role in craftsmanship, manufacturing, commerce and trade in the Empire. In this paper, we empirically investigate the long-run contribution of the Armenian and Greek communities in the Ottoman period on regional development in modern Turkey. We show that districts with greater presence of Greek and Armenian minorities at the end of the 19th century are systematically more densely populated, more urbanized and exhibit greater economic activity today. These results are qualitatively robust to accounting for an extensive set of geographical and historical factors that might have influenced long-run development on the one hand and minority settlement patterns on the other. We explore two potential channels of persistence. First, we provide evidence that Greeks and Armenians might have contributed to long-run economic development through their legacy on human capital accumulation at the local level. This finding possibly reflects the role of inter-group spillovers of cultural values, technology and know-how as well as the self-selection of skilled labor into modern economic sectors established by Armenian and Greek entrepreneurs. Second, we show some evidence supporting the hypothesis that minority assets were also instrumental in the development of a modern national economy in Turkey.

Ethnic minorities and trade: The Soviet Union as a natural experiment

This paper examines the role of ethnic minorities in bilateral trade between countries of the ex‐Soviet Union. We argue that both forced re‐settlement of entire ethnic groups during the Stalin era and artificially drawn borders in Central Asia led to an exogenous ethnic composition within countries. Using data collected by ethnologists on the share of ethnic groups across countries, we build an index of bilateral ethnic networks and estimate its effect on trade using a gravity model. While ethnic networks do not seem to have played a role in inter‐republic trade during the Soviet Union, we find a positive and significant effect of ethnic networks on trade in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union. This effect, however, eroded steadily from the early 2000s.

It's Not the Economy Stupid! Is Russia-US Trade Really Underdeveloped? A Test Using Gravity Models

Politicians, pundits and experts in both Russia and the US frequently bemoan the “underdevelopment” of US-Russia trade, arguing that political factors have inhibited the development of economic ties. It is also often argued that political relations between the two countries would also be more cooperative and less conflictual if these ties developed up to their full potential. The paper seeks to test the conventional wisdom that the US-Russia trade is underdeveloped by employing a standard gravity model to measure where trade between the two countries “should” be. We find no evidence that the US-Russia trade is underdeveloped. In terms of its ability to live up to the predictions of the model, trade between the two countries is predicted by the standard determinants of trade, suggesting that there is nothing erratic about the US-Russia trade and it behaves like any average country pair. These findings suggest that US-Russia trade relations actually live up to their economic potential and that the commonly held idea that political relations between Russia and the US can be dramatically improved by tapping into the “unfulfilled” promise of improved trade relations is unfounded. Moreover, our analysis demonstrates that the sectorial structure of the two economies, factor endowments and comparative advantages do not seem to indicate that there is significant potential for increased trade, as the conventional wisdom would suggest. The conventional view argues that poor political relations have impeded the development of economic relations between the two states. But, in fact, the opposite may be true: relations between the US and Russia are characterized by rivalry and conflict because there is little solid economic grounds for more pacific relations

Career Incentives of Governors in Late Tsarist Russia

Recent empirical studies show that career advancement may be employed as a tool to improve the efficiency of a political hierarchy. This paper investigates whether the central authorities in the Russian Empire resorted to career advancement incentives to improve the performance of provincial governors. To that end, from historical sources, we have constructed a new panel database of individual characteristics and career tracks of the majority of Russian governors in 91 provinces during 1895-1914. Measuring a governors performance by the intensity of peasant revolts and worker strikes in the province under his rule, we provide evidence that the central administration rewarded better performing governors only in the peripheral provinces (oblasts), but not in the main provinces (gubernias). These results are robust to various sensitivity tests. In addition, we show that political connections had no significant effect on career mobility, and the performance evaluation of central authorities did not change significantly in the aftermath of 1905-1907 revolution.

Are Cultural Differences a Barrier to Trade

Using data on bilateral trade and measures of culture, this paper shows that cultural differences dampen bilateral trade. Moreover, this is the first study to probe Huntingtons Clash of Civilizations hypothesis from an economic perspective. We analyze the dynamics of the effect of cultural differences on trade and provide evidence that the negative influence of cultural differences on trade is more prominent in the post-Cold War era than during the Cold War. For instance, two countries with distinct religious majorities have 35% lower bilateral trade flows during the post-Cold War period compared to countries sharing the same majority religion, whereas this negative effect is less than half, at 16%, during the Cold War. In addition, we provide an explanation for the differential impact of cultural differences over time. By mapping out the transition of the effects of cultural and ideological dissimilarities, we show that cold-war ideological blocs are the reason for the suppression of cultural differences during the Cold War.