Margaret S. McMillan’s scientific contributions

This paper presents cross-country evidence confirming that countries with more ethnolinguistic diversity have lower levels of economic growth. But, controlling for other factors, in a sample of 113 countries over the 1960-1990 period we find that the economic cost of diversity is small relative to the benefit of larger country size, and is smaller at higher levels of national income. We conclude that investments in national unity have been associated with faster growth, particularly (but not exclusively) when accompanied by other conditions favoring growth.