The persistence of inferior cultural-institutional conventions

Marianna Belloc and Samuel Bowles

No 157, Working Papers in Public Economics from Department of Economics and Law, Sapienza University of Roma

Abstract: Our theory of cultural-institutional persistence and innovation is based on uncoordinatedupdating of individual social norms and contracts, so that both culture and institutions are endogenous. We explain why Pareto-dominated cultural-institutional configurations may persistover long periods and how transitions may nonetheless occur. Unlike models in which elites may impose inferior institutions or cultures as a self-interested distributional strategies, in our model, the exercise of elite power plays no role in either persistence or innovation, and transitions occur endogenously. We show that persistence will be the greater the more inferior is the Pareto-dominated configuration and the more rational and individualistic is the population.

Keywords: endogenous institutions; endogenous social norms; cultural-institutional persistence; evolutionary game theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C73 D02 D03 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 16
Date: 2012-11
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Journal Article: The Persistence of Inferior Cultural-Institutional Conventions (2013)
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