Cultural transmission, education-promoting attitudes, and economic development

Abstract

This study emphasises the interdependence between physical capital formation and the cultural transmission of human capital-promoting attitudes and values. It demonstrates how this interdependence establishes a powerful propagation mechanism that generates multiple, divergent paths of economic development. It also highlights the role of physical capital formation in expanding the conditions that are propitious to path-dependency in models of cultural transmission: Even in the absence of a cultural complementarity, the long-run equilibrium is sensitive to the initial distribution of cultural attitudes among the population, as long as the combined effects of physical capital formation and social segregation permeate the process of cultural transmission.