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Preface
Before I became interested in the topic of ethnolinguistic diversity, I had been traveling quite a bit between the United States and the countries of the Balkans, such as Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Serbia. It felt like the two ends of the magnetic field of ethnic diversity: on one side, a country where ethnolinguistic diversity is employed with success as a resource of creativity and positive change; on the other side, a region full of rich and colorful cultural differences, where this difference is a trigger for bloody conflict, ethnic hatred, and economic decline. Those trips raised in me the question whether the impact of ethnic diversity on the economic performance of countries is, overall, positive or negative. And, furthermore, what is decisive about whether a country experiences the positive or negative effects of ethnic diversity?
Those questions appear to gain in importance because the world we live in is becoming increasingly diverse. Cultural diversity stems from the existence of ethnic minorities and it continuously increases due to the high levels of immigration experienced by most of the advanced economies.