In educating economists, we should sacrifice some of the more technical aspects of economics (which can be learned later), in favour of the compulsory inclusion of philosophy, political science, and economic history. Three reasons for these interdisciplinary studies are given here. In the...

We study consumers' concerns for the ideological values of their market counterparts and the implications of such concerns for the public promotion of values. Using a survey and online and laboratory experiments, we find that consumers are willing to pay premiums to exchange with counterparts...

What drives change in a society's values? From Marx to modernization theory, scholars have identified a connection between structural transformation and social change. To understand how changes in a society's dominant mode of production affect its dominant values, we examine the case of the...

In this chapter, Lars Osberg has the daunting task of examining the conceptual issues involved in defining and measuring social progress. As he highlights in his introduction, while much had been made of the fact that Canada in 2000 earned first place in the United Nations' Human Development...

This essay explores the relationship between commerce and culture in the context of the recent debate over the social effect of Wal-Mart. In spite of much public debate, little is known about how Wal-Mart affects values. Using data collected from multiple sources, we show there is little...

Does organizational governance contribute to academic quality? Two top research universities are observed in-depth: Berkeley and the MIT. Three key factors are listed that help generate consistent and lasting high performance. Priority is allocated to self-evaluation and to the development of...

This paper presents evidence on the speed of evolution (or lack thereof) of a wide range of values and beliefs of different generations of European immigrants to the US. The main result is that persistence differs greatly across cultural attitudes. Some, for instance deep personal religious...