Punctuality - A Cultural Trait as Equilibrium

Kaushik Basu and Jörgen Weibull

No 582, Working Paper Series from Research Institute of Industrial Economics

Abstract: A people's culture, norms and habits are important determinants not just of the quality of social life but of economic progress and growth. In this paper we take the view that while the importance of culture is undeniable, the innateness of culture is not. We work here with a single example and demonstrate how a human trait which is widely believed to be cultural is at the same time a matter of choice. The example that we shall work with concerns punctuality. We show that punctuality may be simply an equilibrium response of individuals to what they expect others to do. The same society can get caught in a punctual equilibrium or a non-punctual equilibrium.

Keywords: Punctuality; Coordination Games (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C62 C72 D29 D71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2002-06-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mic
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published as the book Punctuality - A Cultural Trait as an Equilibrium, 2003, in R. Arnott et al. (eds.), Economics for an Imperfect World: Essays in Honor of Joseph Stiglitz, MIT Press, Cambridge USA.

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ifn.se/Wfiles/wp/WP582.pdf (application/pdf)

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:hhs:iuiwop:0582

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series from Research Institute of Industrial Economics Research Institute of Industrial Economics, Box 55665, SE-102 15 Stockholm, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Elisabeth Gustafsson ().