The Weight of History on European Cultural Integration: A Gravity Approach

The cultural gravity model proposed in this paper uses micro-level survey data of 21,000 households to estimate the contribution to cultural heterogeneity of a long history of division between the Ottoman, Habsburg, Russian or Prussian Empires since the year 1300 in 21 European countries. By exploiting the variation in the duration of integration of localities in different empires, this paper sheds light on the influence of political integration on cultural integration and on the rate of cultural change. History matters and cultural values change very slowly: long lasting effects on social trust comes after 400 years of common imperial rule.