Do Political or Ethnic and Historical Borders Affect Values and Beliefs More? Some Evidence From Central Europe

The paper uses data from the World Values Survey on individuals in Hungary and its neighbouring countries to break down the estimated cross-country differences of individual beliefs into two effects: one explained by the difference in ethnicity or history and one explained by the difference in political community. The breakdown is made possible by the fact that parts of the Hungarian ethno-linguistic community can be found in all these countries. The results show that border effects are often amplified by the same ethnicity or history, that within-country differences in beliefs are often larger than cross-country differences, and that it is not the case that beliefs concerned with ‘economic questions’ are less influenced by history or ethnicity than others concerned with ‘deeper’ questions. These results, the paper argues, are in line with an alternative (Austrian) view of culture in economics that understands culture as a heterogeneous context of human actions