Culture, institutions, and long-run performance

Haiwen Zhou

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: If institutions are essential for long-run performance, why don’t developing countries adopt institutions in developed countries to become rich? In this dynamic model, culture affects a ruler’s institutional choice, while culture itself evolves endogenously. Multiple stable steady states are possible, and even similar initial conditions can lead to dramatically different steady states. The state of Qin’s unification of China in 221 BC is used to illustrate the model. In one steady state, consistent with what happened in the state of Qin, individuals value material incentives. Qin did not strictly practice the patriarchal clan system advocated by Confucianism. Qin adopted Legalist institutions under which government officials were chosen by merit, and Qin culture was further shaped by Legalism. In another steady state, consistent with what happened in states other than Qin, individuals value loyalty and family values. Those states chose not to adopt Legalist institutions comprehensively for fearing that inconsistencies between culture and institutions could lead to internal rebellions even though institutional reforms would increase their military power. Other cases of how the interdependence between culture and institutions affects performance are also discussed.

Keywords: Culture and institutions; Chinese history; economic development; political economy; path dependence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D02 N45 O53 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-11-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gro
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/103900/1/MPRA_paper_103900.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Culture, institutions, and long‐run performance (2021)
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:pra:mprapa:103900

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().