Alesina, AlbertoBaqir, RezaEasterly, William2010-11-081999Alesina, Alberto, Reza Baqir, and William Easterly. 1999. Public goods and ethnic divisions. Quarterly Journal of Economics 114(4): 1243-1284.0033-5533http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:4551797We present a model that links heterogeneity of preferences across ethnic groups in a city to the amount and type of public goods the city supplies. We test the implications of the model with three related data sets: U. S. cities, U. S. metropolitan areas, and U. S. urban counties. Results show that the shares of spending on productive public goods—education, roads, sewers and trash pickup—in U. S. cities (metro areas/urban counties) are inversely related to the city's (metro area's/county's) ethnic fragmentation, even after controlling for other socioeconomic and demographic determinants. We conclude that ethnic conflict is an important determinant of local public finances.en-USJournal Article2010-11-0810.1162/003355399556269