Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/172034
Year of Publication: 
2016
Series/Report no.: 
LICOS Discussion Paper No. 382
Publisher: 
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, LICOS Centre for Institutions and Economic Performance, Leuven
Abstract: 
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.
Subjects: 
Comparative economic development
economic growth
culture
barriers to technological diffusion
genetic distances
linguistic distances
JEL: 
O10
O11
O20
O33
O40
O47
O57
Z10
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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