The Economics of Cultural Transmission and Socialization

Alberto Bisin and Thierry Verdier

No 16512, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Cultural transmission arguably plays an important role in the determination of many fundamental preference traits (e.g., discounting, risk aversion and altruism) and most cultural traits, social norms, and ideological tenets ( e.g., attitudes towards family and fertility practices, and attitudes in the job market). It is, however, the pervasive evidence of the resilience of ethnic and religious traits across generations that motivates a large fraction of the theoretical and empirical literature on cultural transmission. This article reviews the main contributions of models of cultural transmission, from theoretical and empirical perspectives. It presents their implications regarding the long-run population dynamics of cultural traits and cultural heterogeneity, the world's geographical fragmentation by ethic and religious traits, at any given time. Finally, the paper reviews the empirical literature which estimates various properties of cultural transmission mechanisms as well as the population dynamics of specific traits.

JEL-codes: Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul, nep-evo and nep-soc
Note: POL
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (158)

Published as `The Economics of Cultural Transmission and Socialization,' with Thierry Verdier, in Handbook of Social Economics , Jess Ben- habib, Alberto Bisin, Matt Jackson, eds., Elsevier, 2010.

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Related works:
Working Paper: The Economics of Cultural Transmission and Socialization (2010)
Working Paper: The Economics of Cultural Transmission and Socialization (2010)
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