 A Theory of Cultural RevivalsMurat Iyigun, Jared Rubin and Avner Seror Working Papers from Chapman University, Economic Science Institute Abstract: Why do some societies have political institutions that support productively inefficient outcomes? And why does the political power of elites vested in these outcomes often grow over time, even when they are unable to block more efficient modes of production?We propose an explanation centered on the interplay between political and cultural change. We build a model in which cultural values are transmitted inter-generationally. The cultural composition of society, in turn, determines public good provision as well as the future political power of elites from different cultural groups. We characterize the equilibrium of the model and provide sufficient conditions for the emergence of cultural revivals. These are characterized as movements in which both the cultural composition of society as well as the political power of elites who are vested in productively inefficient outcomes grow over time. We reveal the usefulness of our framework by applying it to two case studies: the Jim Crow South and Turkey’s G¨ulen Movement. Keywords: institutions; cultural beliefs; cultural transmission; institutional change (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:chu:wpaper:18-14 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Working Papers from Chapman University, Economic Science Institute Contact information at EDIRC. |
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