Social engineering refers to deliberate attempts, often under the form of legislative moves, to promote changes in customs and norms that hurt the interests of marginalized population groups. This paper explores the analytical conditions under which social engineering is more or less likely to...

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...

The role of a person's identity and sense of integration into society as instruments of economic development has been vastly underestimated in the literature in economics. We talk of policies to subsidize the poor and give direct support to alleviate poverty. But in the long run, what is...

The article analyzes the relationship between government policies and social capital development. Policies that promote capital flows and domestic capital development, human development, and gross domestic capital formation positively influence social capital, while those that contribute to...

The focus of the last two decades (1994–2015) on the world’s Indigenous peoples has highlighted a number of critical issues that are central to Indigenous empowerment and resurgence in the quest for decolonization. The key issues include Indigenous peoples’ full and effective participation...

What will happen to gender equality as the world develops? While modernization theory stresses the emergence of increasingly cosmopolitan gender values, work on the cultural roots of gender roles finds that measures of historical patriarchy exert a persistent influence on contemporary attitudes...