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American Economic Review Vol. 91 No. 4 2001

Social Culture and Economic Performance

Hanming Fang

Department of Economics, Yale University, 37 Hill-house Avenue, New Haven, CT 06511.

Abstract

The connection between obtaining higher paying jobs and undertaking some seemingly irrelevant activity is interpreted as “social culture.” In the context of a society trying to adopt a new technology, I show that by allowing the firms to give preferential treatment to workers based on some “cultural activity,” the society can partially overcome an informational free-riding problem. Therefore, social culture may affect the economic performance by altering the effective production technology of the economy.

DOI
10.1257/aer.91.4.924
Volume
91
Issue
4
Pages
924-937
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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