Economic growth and cultural change

Panagiotis Petrakis and Pantelis Kostis

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), 2013, vol. 47, issue C, 147-157

Abstract: The paper contributes to the interpretation of annual growth rates based on the effect of the basic growth factors (capital, labour, human capital) and the cultural background as part of the “remaining factors”. It uses a series of variables to express these effects, which are analysed with a principal component analysis and a regression analysis, in the context of a Solow–Romer augmented growth framework. Cultural background variables are divided in two main groups: “Efficiency Orientation” and “Social Orientation” variables. We formulate the hypothesis that within the well-known growth framework “Efficiency Orientation” variables significantly affect economic growth, while “Social Orientation” influences are unpredicted in principle. The results confirm that cultural background positively affects annual growth rates. However, “Social Orientation” plays the main (positive) role. Furthermore, performing a sensitivity analysis on the cultural background, the conclusions confirm that cultural background has a strong interpretive role in annual growth rates. The deterioration of the “Social Orientation” cultural background negatively affects annual GDP growth. The paper points the crucial explanatory power of the “Social Orientation” cultural background for annual growth rates.

Keywords: Cultural background; Growth function; Economic growth; Basic growth factors; Remaining growth factors; Cultural change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053535713000218
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:soceco:v:47:y:2013:i:c:p:147-157

DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2013.02.011

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) is currently edited by Pablo Brañas Garza

More articles in Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().