A note on the macroeconomic consequences of ethnic/racial tension
构建了一个基于美国新闻关键词的民族/种族紧张指数，并在马尔可夫转换框架下检验其对经济增长的影响，发现经济低增长时期该影响更大。
While many studies stressed the importance of ethnic fractionalization on long-term economic growth, neither ethnic fractionalization always leads to ethnic conflict nor the intensity of conflict is constant over time. To address this potential bias, we construct an ethnic/racial tension index by using the number of US news articles that contain certain keywords. Utilizing this index we test the predictions of a simple theoretical model \nin a Markov Switching framework which allows to identify the impact of ethnic/racial tension in different states of the economy. Consistent with our theoretical predictions, results show that the magnitude of the impact of ethnic/racial tension is larger during low-growth periods.