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on Cultural Economics |
| By: | Prieto Rodríguez, Juan; Ateca Amestoy, Victoria María |
| Abstract: | A first version of this paper was presented at the University of Catania, 2011 and at the fifth European Workshop on Applied Cultural Economics in Dublin, 2011. |
| Keywords: | forecasting, count data, prediction intervals, Brier scores, bootstrapping, arts |
| JEL: | Z11 D12 |
| Date: | 2012–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehu:dfaeii:201201&r=cul |
| By: | Berliant, Marcus; Fujita, Masahisa |
| Abstract: | Is the paradise of effortless communication the ideal environment for knowledge creation? Or, can the development of local culture in regions raise knowledge productivity compared to a single region with a unitary culture? In other words, can a real technological increase in the cost of collaboration and the cost of public knowledge flow between regions, resulting in cultural differentiation between regions, increase welfare? In our framework, a culture is a set of ideas held exclusively by residents of a location. In general in our model, the equilibrium path generates separate cultures in different regions. When we compare this to the situation where all workers are resident in one region, R & D workers become too homogeneous and there is only one culture. As a result, equilibrium productivity in the creation of new knowledge is lower relative to the situation when there are multiple cultures and workers are more diverse. |
| Keywords: | knowledge creation; knowledge diversity; ideas and culture |
| JEL: | Z1 D83 O31 |
| Date: | 2012–02–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:36996&r=cul |
| By: | Nathan Nunn |
| Abstract: | This article discusses the importance of accounting for cultural values and beliefs when studying the process of historical economic development. A notion of culture as heuristics or rules-of-thumb that aid in decision making is described. Because cultural traits evolve based upon relative fitness, historical shocks can have persistent impacts if they alter the costs and benefits of different traits. A number of empirical studies confirm that culture is an important mechanism that helps explain why historical shocks can have persistent impacts; these are reviewed here. As an example, I discuss the colonial origins hypothesis (Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson, 2001), and show that our understanding of the transplantation of European legal and political institutions during the colonial period remains incomplete unless the values and beliefs brought by European settlers are taken into account. It is these cultural beliefs that formed the foundation of the initial institutions that in turn were key for long-term economic development. |
| JEL: | B52 N00 |
| Date: | 2012–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17869&r=cul |