{"title":"National identity, public goods, and modern economic development","authors":"Stergios Skaperdas , Patrick A. Testa","doi":"10.1016/j.jce.2025.01.006","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Since the Industrial Revolution, large-scale economic development has coincided with the rise of the modern nation-state. We argue that this is not a coincidence. We show how the advent of <em>national identity</em> helped modern states overcome internal conflicts over the distribution of economic benefits to provide public goods and grow. Using a model with elites and commoners, characterized initially by distinct group identities (e.g., ethnicity, class), we show that elites have an incentive to induce commoners to identify with the nation. The more widespread is national identification, the less is conflict between elites and commoners, and the more revenues can be collected and public goods broadly provided. This effect is self-reinforcing: the greater is public goods provision, the greater is the economic status of the nation and thus the psychological return on national identification. Elites’ incentives to induce national identification, however, depend on the presence of political restraints on the elite. We reexamine the historical cases of England (1600–1920) and the United States (1865–present), identifying support for our framework therein.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48183,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Comparative Economics","volume":"53 2","pages":"Pages 412-432"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1000,"publicationDate":"2025-02-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Comparative Economics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014759672500006X","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Since the Industrial Revolution, large-scale economic development has coincided with the rise of the modern nation-state. We argue that this is not a coincidence. We show how the advent of national identity helped modern states overcome internal conflicts over the distribution of economic benefits to provide public goods and grow. Using a model with elites and commoners, characterized initially by distinct group identities (e.g., ethnicity, class), we show that elites have an incentive to induce commoners to identify with the nation. The more widespread is national identification, the less is conflict between elites and commoners, and the more revenues can be collected and public goods broadly provided. This effect is self-reinforcing: the greater is public goods provision, the greater is the economic status of the nation and thus the psychological return on national identification. Elites’ incentives to induce national identification, however, depend on the presence of political restraints on the elite. We reexamine the historical cases of England (1600–1920) and the United States (1865–present), identifying support for our framework therein.
期刊介绍:
The mission of the Journal of Comparative Economics is to lead the new orientations of research in comparative economics. Before 1989, the core of comparative economics was the comparison of economic systems with in particular the economic analysis of socialism in its different forms. In the last fifteen years, the main focus of interest of comparative economists has been the transition from socialism to capitalism.