History, Diversity & Development: Evidence from Afghan Provinces

In this paper, we explore the effects of historical and contemporary ethnolinguistic diversity on socio-economic development in Afghan provinces. Using a robust regression discontinuity design across historical and contemporary cultural borders, we find that higher levels of contemporary diversity are likely to induce lower levels of conflict, higher levels of income and trust, and lower levels of individualism. Historical ethnolinguistic borders are strongly associated with income, provision of public goods and political preferences in Afghanistan. The Old Persian empires of the Achaemenids, Parthians, and most importantly Sasanians, as well as the Turkic empires of Timurids and Chughtai have had a positive long-run impact on Afghan socio-economic development, while the opposite holds for Islamic Persian empires.