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Cultural Traits in Economic Theory

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Understanding Cultural Traits

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Abstract

This contribution introduces the strong relationships between the economic theory and the concept of cultural traits. Even if cultural traits have been only recently introduced in a formal way in the economic modelization, I show how the very basic elements of economic theory (preferences, social norms, and strategies) can be fully considered as cultural traits. I show, then, how economists face the problem of the transmission and diffusion of these traits. To do this, I analyze the frameworks from evolutionary game theory, the economics of cultural transmission and network theory. Each of them provides useful insights to explain the diffusion of traits and the emergence of cultural homogeneity or diversity. Ongoing research now aims at providing an unified economic framework to model these cultural dynamics.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Connection: In this approach it is clear that evolution or transmission of traits does not mean in any way a progress towards higher level of development. The relevance of this observation is explained in the introduction of Chap. 3 (and Connection therein).

  2. 2.

    The quantity of literature analyzing this issue is very large and growing. As a matter of example, refer to this set of works: Borjas (1995), Card and Rothstein (2007), Cutler and Glaeser (1997), Cutler et al. (1999), Ross (1998), Moody (2001), Burgess et al. (2005), and Söderström and Urusitalo (2010).

  3. 3.

    Connection: Look at Sect. 2.2 for some connections to this individualistic approach to culture.

  4. 4.

    More precisely, non cooperative game theory looks at equilibria in which every agent does not have any incentive by changing, by herself, her own strategy. Cooperative game theory, instead, allow agents to act in groups and studies the behavior of coalitions of agents. However, we refer here only to non cooperative game theory being the branch of the discipline that produced the largest amount of testable results with respect to our issue.

  5. 5.

    Theorists try to solve this problem by providing many kind of refinements of the concept of Nash equilibrium that enables to select the proper equilibrium in various situation. However, many of these refinements are used in static contexts. As it is clear, the issue of the diffusion of cultural traits is a dynamic one so that we do not focus on them.

  6. 6.

    A good introduction to evolutionary game theory can be found in Weibull (1995). A good introduction to evolutionary game theory based on many examples from different contexts is Gintis (2009).

  7. 7.

    Axelrod (1984), Binmore (2006), and Gintis (2004) provide goods insights on how this issue has been studied. For example Sacconi (2007) and Nowak (2006) study the role of reputation, while Fehr and Fischbacher (2002, 2004), Gintis et al. (2005) focus on the role of prosocial preferences, or Bruni et al. (2014) that study the role of social endogenous recognition for cooperative behaviors.

  8. 8.

    Connection: An interesting perspective on cooperation is also given by Chap. 19, where visual art is seen as a signal that helped humans to reach cooperative outcomes in complex societies.

  9. 9.

    Connection: A hidden hypothesis is that, once agents get a trait, they do not change it for the rest of the time. This is similar to the socialization hypothesis in Sect. 14.2.3, and somehow different from the scarcity hypothesis discussed at the same point in the book. Moreover the reader can find other perspectives on the issue of cultural transmission by referring to Sect. 16.3.2 and 17.5.

  10. 10.

    Connection: See Chap. 11 for a presentation of the theory of Cavalli Sforza and Feldman. See, in particular, the connection in Sect. 11.3.

  11. 11.

    Connection: Look at Sect. 10.3 to have a concrete idea of the epidemiological approach to cultural transmission of traits.

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Acknowledgments

The author is greatful to ERC project TECTACOM - 324004 for financial support

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  1. Paris School of Economics, Paris, France

    Fabrizio Panebianco

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  1. Fabrizio Panebianco
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Correspondence to Fabrizio Panebianco .

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  1. Paris School of Economics, Paris, France

    Fabrizio Panebianco

  2. CISEPS-CenterforInterdisciplinaryStudies, University of Milano - Bicocca, Milano, Italy

    Emanuele Serrelli

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Panebianco, F. (2016). Cultural Traits in Economic Theory. In: Panebianco, F., Serrelli, E. (eds) Understanding Cultural Traits. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24349-8_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24349-8_12

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