Several celebrated scholars argue that diverse preferences and coordination failure due to ethnic and cultural diversity hamper the social cohesion necessary for good economic management, leading to development failure. Using several measures of diversity, we find that higher levels of ethno-linguistic and cultural fractionalization are conditioned positively on higher economic growth by an ind...

Development economists have superseded any necessity of using Arrow’s methodological individualism (MI) in focusing on cross-cultural, cross-national, or developmental economics. This study examines whether analysis of cross-cultural economic models might include a concept of economic generosity as a type of economic structuration that deviates from MI principles and is closer to what economist...

Why do religious minorities respond in different ways to economic development? We develop a model of religious organizations based on a historical case study of Jewish emancipation in nineteenth century Europe. In Germany, a liberal Reform movement developed in response to emancipation, while ultra-Orthodox Judaism emerged in eastern Europe. Our explanation for this polarization contributes to ...

Despite constant post-war efforts to decipher the development process, it appears that little practical progress has been made. Many theories have been proposed (some leading directly to policy), but very few developing countries have succeeded in breaking the bonds of underdevelopment. Social theorists from Karl Marx to Daniel Bell have argued that economic development brings pervasive cultura...

How much do cultural biases affect economic exchange? We try to answer this question by using the relative trust European citizens have for citizens of other countries. First, we document that this trust is affected not only by objective characteristics of the country being trusted, but also by cultural aspects such as religion, a history of conflicts, and genetic similarities. We then find tha...

Increasing localisation represents one of the most spectacular processes of the economies that develop and transform as a result of globalisation processes: while the (relative) importance of national economies is decreasing, the economic role of regions and cities seems to grow. Global competition has intensified also in space, especially with the growing importance of the knowledge-based econ...

This research was conducted to investigate the factors contributing to thefailure in the forestry and rangeland by-product cooperative companies in Lorestanprovince, Iran. A descriptive-correlative research design was used. The statisticalpopulations were 1100 people divided into two groups of experts from natural resourceagency in Lorestan province and members of cooperative companies. The sam...

In his article "Conservative Evolution, Sustainability, and Culture" Gábor Náray-Szabó argues that evolution is conservative in the sense that throughout the history of the universe old constructs like elementary particles, amino acids, and living cells remained conserved while the world evolved/evolves in complexity. A similar process can be observed in cultural evolution as components of soci...