Peers and Culture

Maria Saez-Marti and Anna Sjögren

No 642, Working Paper Series from Research Institute of Industrial Economics

Abstract: We analyze the evolution of cultural traits when parents purposefully invest resources in order to socialize their children to the cultural traits that maximize child lifetime utility. We assume that children are not passive in their adoption of traits from peers. Instead they are guided by an evaluation of the merit of traits. We show that such evaluation is likely to render this process of "oblique transmission" biased. We then show that when transmission of traits from society is biased or frequency dependent, cultural diversity is sustainable even when all parents strive to transmit the same trait. We also show that demand for cultural pluralism on the part of parent does not guarantee cultural diversity.

Keywords: Peer Groups; Cultural Transmission; Cultural Diversity; Oblique Transmission (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D10 I20 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 17 pages
Date: 2005-05-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Peers and Culture* (2008)
Working Paper: Peers and Culture (2007)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:0642

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