’s conjecture that today marked differences in social capital between the North and South of Italy were due to the culture of …

’s conjecture that today marked differences in social capital between the North and South of Italy were due to the culture of …

While both cultural and legal norms (institutions) help foster cooperation, culture is the more primitive of the two … and itself sustains formal institutions. Cultural changes are rarer and slower than changes in legal institutions, which … makes it difficult to identify the role played by culture. Cultural changes and their effects are easier to identify in …

Since Max Weber, there has been an active debate on the impact of religion on people’s economic attitudes. Much of the …

Why is underdevelopment so persistent? One explanation is that poor countries do not have institutions that can support … growth. Because institutions (both good and bad) are persistent, underdevelopment is persistent. An alternative view is that … economic institutions persist even in fairly democratic but poor societies, and the second because it does not explain why poor …

Economists have been reluctant to rely on culture as a possible determinant of economic phenomena. The notion of … culture is so broad and the channels through which it can enter the economic discourse so vague that it is difficult to design … testable hypotheses. In this paper we show this does need to be the case. We introduce a narrower definition of culture that …

instrumented with its cultural determinants. We conclude that perceptions rooted in culture are important (and generally omitted …

results suggest that perceptions rooted in culture are important (and generally omitted) determinants of economic exchange. …