The literature suggests ethnic diversity has a negative effect on development. Yet, we also know that government policies—e.g., recognizing multiple languages in minority-sizable areas—can attenuate these effects. In this paper, we ask: What are the socioeconomic implications of minority language recognition? We leverage a legal stipulation in Romania as a quasi-experiment: Minority languages are recognized as official in areas where the minority constitutes more than 20% of the population. We argue the recognition of minority languages builds social trust and facilitates efficiency in economic exchanges—mollifying the otherwise detrimental consequences of diversity. Using data at the municipality level, we find that in areas where only Romanian is recognized, ethnic diversity has a negative effect on development—a result consistent with the literature. This effect, however, is absent in areas where a minority language is recognized. The implications suggest that lowering the threshold for language recognition could promote even further development.

文献表明种族多样性对发展有负面影响。然而，我们也知道政府政策——例如，在少数民族地区承认多种语言——可以减弱这些影响。在本文中，我们要问：少数民族语言识别的社会经济意义是什么？我们利用罗马尼亚的一项法律规定作为准实验：在少数民族占人口 20% 以上的地区，少数民族语言被视为官方语言。我们认为，对少数民族语言的认可可以建立社会信任并促进经济交流的效率——缓和多样性带来的不利后果。使用市级数据，我们发现在仅识别罗马尼亚语的地区，种族多样性对发展有负面影响——这一结果与文献一致。然而，在承认少数民族语言的地区，这种影响是不存在的。这些影响表明，降低语言识别的门槛可以促进进一步的发展。