Accounting for Cultural Spread with an Economic SIR Model

Laurent Gauthier ()
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Laurent Gauthier: CAC-IXXI, Complex Systems Institute, ESPRI - Espace, Pratiques sociales et Images dans les mondes Grec et Romain - ArScAn - Archéologies et Sciences de l'Antiquité - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - UP8 - Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis - UPN - Université Paris Nanterre - MCC - Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: The spread of culture has been often paralleled with epidemic contagion, and susceptible-infected-recovered (SIR) compartment models have been extensively used in the social sciences to represent social phenomena. However, these models do not endogenously account for the emergence of the particular SIR dynamics. We rely on a simple economic construct where agents decide to acquire or to shed some cultural trait at a market price, and derive SIR-like dynamics for the evolution of the prevalence of the trait. While the resulting dynamics are similar to the standard SIR model, they do not rely on contagion or contact. The similarity between both models stresses the fact that social phenomena that resemble epidemiological patterns may be explainable without resorting to contagion mechanisms.

Keywords: Culture diffusion; Contagion; SIR Models; Economic modeling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-06-17
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Published in Quality and Quantity, 2025, ⟨10.1007/s11135-025-02234-3⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05062102

DOI: 10.1007/s11135-025-02234-3

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