Apr 09, 2024; Colloquium
Colloquium: Identity in Spatial Economics
People are emotionally attached to places and make economic decisions accordingly. I study the effect of regional identity on internal migration flows in Germany between 1995 and 2017 and confirm that historical affiliation determines migration patterns in a gravity model. In another paper I show how regional diversity, shaped by historic migration, affects innovativeness of municipalities positively. I proxy for diversity by using family names from a phone book in 1996 and casualty lists from WWI. In a third paper I look at the effect of (de)centralization and the different levels of local, regional and national identity on tax morale.