Sunday, 14 December 2008

Luigi Guiso, Paola Sapienza and Luigi Zingales(2006)”Does Culture Affect Economic Outcomes?”

This is a application economical analysis to culture. In recent years, some research about relation between cultures and economic outcomes emerged through better techniques of cultural analysis. This paper summarizes these approach and achievements.

In this paper, authors define culture as “those customary beliefs and values that ethnic, religious, and social groups transmit fairly unchanged from generation to generation”, and affect society through prior beliefs and values or preferences.

First, it shows direct impact of culture on expectation and preferences. Second it describes the fact that beliefs and preferences have an impact on economic outcomes. And last, it demonstrates interaction between culture and economics. But it also takes the thought that culture changes slowly and therefore culture is given for people in the culture.


In conclusion, it shows culture affects economical outcomes, and even a culture which was made when it was useful becomes a constraint for another situation, it remains.

Questions:
What is basic logic for effectiveness of culture to beliefs and preferences?

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