EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

The Economic Incentives of Cultural Transmission: Spatial Evidence from Naming Patterns across France

Yann Algan, Thierry Mayer and Mathias Thoenig

SciencePo Working papers Main from HAL

Abstract: This paper aims at studying how economic incentives influence cultural transmission. We do so in the context of naming decisions, a crucial expression of cultural identity. Our focus is on Arabic versus Non-Arabic names given by parents to their newborn babies in France over the 2003-2007 period. Our model of cultural transmission disentangles between three determinants: (i) vertical transmission of parental culture; (ii) horizontal influence from the neighborhood; (iii) economic penalty associated with names that sound culturally distinctive. Our identification is based on the sample of households being exogenously allocated across public housings dwellings. We find that economic incentives largely influence naming choices: In the absence of economic penalty, the annual number of babies born with an Arabic name would have been more than 50 percent larger. Our theory-based estimates allow us to perform a welfare analysis where we gauge the strength of cultural attachment in monetary units. We find that the vertical transmission of an Arabic name provides the same shift in parents' utility as a 3\% rise in lifetime income of the child.

Keywords: Economic incentives; Cultural transmission; Cultural identity; Name (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-04-01
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-03460867
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-03460867/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Economic Incentives of Cultural Transmission: Spatial Evidence from Naming Patterns Across France (2022) Downloads
Working Paper: The Economic Incentives of Cultural Transmission: Spatial Evidence from Naming Patterns Across France (2022) Downloads
Working Paper: The Economic Incentives of Cultural Transmission: Spatial Evidence from Naming Patterns Across France (2022) Downloads
Working Paper: The Economic Incentives of Cultural Transmission: Spatial Evidence from Naming Patterns Across France (2022) Downloads
Working Paper: The Economic Incentives of Cultural Transmission: Spatial Evidence from Naming Patterns across France (2021) Downloads
Working Paper: The Economic Incentives of Cultural Transmission: Spatial Evidence from Naming Patterns across France (2021) Downloads
Working Paper: The Economic Incentives of Cultural Transmission: Spatial Evidence from Naming Patterns across France (2021) Downloads
Working Paper: The Economic Incentives of Cultural Transmission: Spatial Evidence from Naming Patterns across France (2021) Downloads
Working Paper: The Economic Incentives of Cultural Transmission: Spatial Evidence from Naming Patterns across France (2021) Downloads
Working Paper: The Economic Incentives of Cultural Transmission: Spatial Evidence from Naming Patterns across France (2013) Downloads
Working Paper: The Economic Incentives of Cultural Transmission: Spatial Evidence from Naming Patterns across France (2013) Downloads
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:hal:spmain:hal-03460867

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SciencePo Working papers Main from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Contact - Sciences Po Departement of Economics ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-22
Handle: RePEc:hal:spmain:hal-03460867