Does Culture Affect Economic Outcomes?

Paola Sapienza (), Luigi Zingales () and Luigi Guiso ()

No 11999, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Economists have been reluctant to rely on culture as a possible determinant of economic phenomena. The notion of culture is so broad and the channels through which it can enter the economic discourse so vague that it is difficult to design testable hypotheses. In this paper we show this does need to be the case. We introduce a narrower definition of culture that allows for a simple methodology to develop and test cultural-based explanations. We also present several applications of this methodology: from the choice to become entrepreneur to that of how much to save, to end with the political decision on income redistribution.

JEL-codes: Z1 A1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-02
Note: CF EFG
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations View citations in EconPapers (209) Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w11999.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Does Culture Affect Economic Outcomes? (2006)
Working Paper: Does Culture Affect Economic Outcomes? (2006)
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:nbr:nberwo:11999

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w11999

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc
Address: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by ().