Culture, diffusion, and economic development

Arbeitspapier

This research explores the effects of culture on technological diffusion and economic development. It shows that culture's direct effects on development and barrier effects to technological diffusion are, in general, observationally equivalent. In particular, using a large set of measures of cultural values, it establishes empirically that pairwise differences in contemporary development are associated with pairwise cultural differences relative to the technological frontier, only in cases where observational equivalence holds. Additionally, it establishes that differences in cultural traits that are correlated with genetic and linguistic distances are statistically and economically significantly correlated with differences in economic development. These results highlight the difficulty of disentangling the direct and barrier effects of culture, while lending credence to the idea that common ancestry generates persistence and plays a central role in economic development.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: LICOS Discussion Paper ; No. 382

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Economic Development: General ; Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development ; Development Planning and Policy: General ; Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes ; Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity: General ; Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence ; Comparative Studies of Countries ; Cultural Economics; Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology: General
• Subject: Comparative economic development ; economic growth ; culture ; barriers to technological diffusion ; genetic distances ; linguistic distances

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Harutyunyan, Ani ; Ozak, Omer
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, LICOS Centre for Institutions and Economic Performance
• (where): Leuven
• (when): 2016

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/172034
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:41 AM CET