Culture, Diffusion, and Economic Development

Abstract

This research explores the effects of culture on technological diffusion and economic development. It shows that culture's direct effects on development and barrier effects to technological diffusion are, in general, observationally equivalent. In particular, using a large set of cultural measures, it establishes empirically that pairwise differences in contemporary development are associated with pairwise cultural differences relative to the technological frontier, only in cases where observational equivalence holds. Additionally, it establishes that differences in cultural traits that are correlated with genetic and linguistic distances are statistically and economically significantly correlated with differences in economic development. These results highlight the difficulty of disentangling the direct and barrier effects of culture, while lending credence to the idea that common ancestry generates persistence and plays a central role in economic development.

Geographical Origins and Economic Consequences of Language Structures

“…4 Existing economic research predominantly views languages as an identifier of cultural and ethnic groups. Linguistic fractionalization as well as linguistic distance have been extensively used as a proxy for ethnic fractionalization and cultural distance in the exploration of the effect ethnic diversity on economic growth and the impact of cultural distance on the diffusion of development (Easterly and Levine, 1997;Fearon, 2003;Alesina et al, 2003;Alesina and Ferrara, 2005;Desmet et al, 2012;Harutyunyan andÖzak, 2016). matical gender.…”

Geographical Roots of the Coevolution of Cultural and Linguistic Traits

“…10 It contributes to the growing literature on the evolution of language (Pinker and Bloom, 1990;Christiansen and Kirby, 2003a,b;Bickerton, 2007), 10 Existing economic research predominantly views languages as an identifier of cultural and ethnic groups. Linguistic fractionalization as well as linguistic distance have been extensively used as a proxy for cultural fractionalization and cultural distance in the exploration of the effect of ethnic diversity on economic growth and the impact of cultural distance on the diffusion of development (Easterly and Levine, 1997;Fearon, 2003;Alesina et al, 2003;Alesina and Ferrara, 2005;Desmet et al, 2012;Harutyunyan andÖzak, 2016). In particular, Michalopoulos (2012) and Ashraf and Galor (2013a) explore the geographical origins (i.e., diversity of soil quality and migratory distance from Africa) of existing variation in linguistic fractionalization within a geographical region.…”

Geographical Roots of the Coevolution of Cultural and Linguistic Traits

“…10 It contributes to the growing literature on the evolution of language (Pinker and Bloom, 1990;Christiansen and Kirby, 2003a,b;Bickerton, 2007), 10 Existing economic research predominantly views languages as an identifier of cultural and ethnic groups. Linguistic fractionalization as well as linguistic distance have been extensively used as a proxy for cultural fractionalization and cultural distance in the exploration of the effect of ethnic diversity on economic growth and the impact of cultural distance on the diffusion of development (Easterly and Levine, 1997;Fearon, 2003;Alesina et al, 2003;Alesina and Ferrara, 2005;Desmet et al, 2012;Harutyunyan and Özak, 2016). In particular, Michalopoulos (2012) and Ashraf and Galor (2013a) explore the geographical origins (i.e., diversity of soil quality and migratory distance from Africa) of existing variation in linguistic fractionalization within a geographical region.…”