Economic Models of Cultural Transmission

Alberto Bisin and Thierry Verdier

No 20340, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: In this chapter we survey recent advances in modeling cultural transmission in the economics literature. We first present the basic canonical model of the evolution of cultural traits in the social sciences. Both Economics and Evolutionary anthropology build on this canonical model but their approaches are conceptually very different. After elucidating these differences, we introduce several recent economic models of cultural transmission which address a rich set of novel and interesting questions in the literature. We present these models as extensions of the canonical framework, organized along theoretical dimensions that we categorize as pertaining to preferences and technology. We finally briefly discuss how cultural evolution represents a fundamental component - alongside institutional change - of recent theoretical work on the political economy of long-run growth. We conclude suggesting interesting areas for future research.

JEL-codes: O10 P16 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-06
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