Social Attitudes and Economic Development: An Epidemiological Approach

Yann Algan () and Pierre Cahuc

No 6403, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: In this paper we develop a new empirical approach to uncovering the impact of social attitudes on economic development. We first show that trust of second-generation Americans is significantly influenced by the country of origin of their forebears. In the spirit of the epidemiology literature, we interpret this phenomenon as the consequence of inherited social attitudes. We show that trust inherited by second-generation Americans from their country of origins has changed over time. This result allows us to use the inherited trust of second-generation Americans as a time-varying instrument to track back the evolution of trust in the home country of their parents. This strategy enables us to identify the specific impact of inherited trust on economic development relative to other traditional candidates, such as institutions and geography, by controlling for country fixed effects. We find that inherited trust has explained a substantial share of economic development on a sample of 30 countries during the post-war period, by improving total factor productivity and the accumulation of human and physical capital.

Keywords: economic development; growth; social capital; trust (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F10 N13 O10 P10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-mig and nep-soc
Date: 2007-07
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cepr.org/pubs/dps/DP6403.asp (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Working Paper: Social Attitudes and Economic Development: An Epidemiological Approach (2007)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:6403

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.cepr.org/pubs/dps/DP6403.asp

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers
Address: Centre for Economic Policy Research, 53--56 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DG
Series data maintained by ().