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The purpose of this paper is to develop the theoretical linkage between culture and economic growth and empirically test the relationship by measuring culture and how it affects labor productivity.

This study uses a cross-section study of developing countries and regresses economic productivity growth on a set of control variables and cultural factors.

It is found that three cultural factors, economic attitudes, political attitudes, and attitudes towards the family, affect economic productivity growth.

Many economists ignore culture as a factor in economic growth, either because they discount the value of culture or because they have no simple way to quantify culture, resulting in the role of culture being under-researched. The study is the first to extensively examine the role of culture in productivity growth using large-scale data sources. The authors show that culture plays an important role in productivity gains across countries, contributing to the study of the effects of culture on economic development, and that culture can be empirically measured and linked to an activity that directly affects the economic growth – labor productivity.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how culture affects economic development on Native American reservations by examining how culture directs the attention of entrepreneurs and interacts with formal governance institutions.

This paper combines theoretical insights from economic sociology, market process economics and institutional economics as a basis to evaluate entrepreneurship and economic development on Native American reservations. Culture, as a web of social meanings, shapes what opportunities entrepreneurs are alert to, influences how they perceive transaction costs and determines whether institutions achieve their intended ends. Historical and contemporary case studies are used to build analytical narratives to corroborate the theoretical approach.

The federal government has imposed many formal institutions on reservations, which have disrupted traditional governance and property rights structures. If formal institutions do not comport with the underlying culture, those institutions do not facilitate positive entrepreneurship and economic growth. Despite the barriers, entrepreneurs across several reservations have leveraged their cultural and social ties to create robust informal economies. In some cases, imposed institutions have fostered rent-seeking and have given rise to a culture of rent-seeking.

This paper looks at Native American entrepreneurship and institutions in the broadest sense. However, there is a large amount of diversity within the cultural and governance structures of Native American communities. Future research could examine specific tribes or reservations in more detail.

This paper elucidates cultural and institutional barriers to productive entrepreneurship on Native American lands. Policymakers must understand these root causes if they are to facilitate economic growth.

This paper’s combination of theoretical perspectives helps explain the widespread economic development issues on Native American lands.

To overcome the errors of the exogenous growth theories of the past, the new growth theories, currently in vogue, attempt to incorporate technological change as endogenous to the growth process. While making a commendable effort to see into that black box of technological change, these so‐called new growth theories are also subject to question and critique on a variety of grounds. One of these is that the new growth theories are not really that new. Another area of concern relates to their empirical relevancy. This is especially evident in assessing the practical use of the new growth theories in terms of problem identification and policy resolution. Other problem areas relate to issues of conceptual clarity and underlying assumptions. By assuming the process of economic growth to be synonymous with that of economic development the result is to avoid the prerequisite structural transformation inherent in the dynamics of culture evolution. Culture evolution in turn is predicated upon technological advance conceptualized as both material and social technology. It is argued in this paper that an explanation as to why technology is endogenous to the processes of growth and economic development is best served vis‐à‐vis an analysis of the dynamics of culture evolution.

Demonstrates the relevance of a stages methodology as a basis for understanding and analysing the evolutionary metamorphosis leading to the current Russian malaise. Addresses the advantages and disadvantages of the methodology, such as the unilinear fallacy, and analyses economic stagnation and decline in the context of the dynamics of culture evolution in the stage of modern economic growth. Given the Kuznetsian emphasis on a science‐fed technology, how then to explain the lack of Russian permeability to that technological flow? Many variables, such as excessive military spending, nationalism, rigid centralization, ideology, and so on, enter into such an analytical purview. It appears that neither tsarist nor Soviet Russia was able to create a culture adequately permeable to the dynamics of an ongoing science‐fed technological flow. The basic problem for Russia to overcome today is one of a cultural lag. A greater democratization of social and economic organization, concomitant with the needs of a modern industrial society, appears in order.

Essays a conceptural clarification and theory of the process of economic evolution. Using the Veblenian matrix, conceptualizes the economic process in the framework of culture and its evolution. Economic evolution, as a gestalt, comprises the processes of both economic growth (quantitative statics) and development (qualitative dynamics). The dynamics of culture evolution is founded on the advance of technology which constitutes the “core of culture”. The essence of the process of culture evolution is contained in the dichotomy of useful knowledge. The advance of useful knowledge appears in its application as technology and in its store as culture. The process of economic evolution increases the capacity of culture and thereby enables humankind to take bigger and bigger bites of the infinity of knowledge. Culture evolution, fed by the dynamics of the economic process, offers the potential for an enhanced “consciousness of the cosmos” and as such a conception of human progress.

This paper seeks to analyze empirically the net effect of trade openness on “economic culture”, measured by indicators of trust, respect, level of self‐determination, and obedience. Openness to international trade means that societies are more likely to be exposed to alternative attitudes, beliefs, ideas, and values leading to a Schumpeterian process of creative destruction whereby culture is destroyed on some margins and enhanced on others.

Using data on trade openness from Quinn and Sachs and Warner, the paper empirically evaluates the impact of trade openness on economic culture. The paper's measure of culture is taken from Tabellini and Williamson and Kerekes, where data from the World Values Survey is aggregated to create a culture variable. The paper isolates the impact of trade policies on economic culture through a variety of empirical strategies including both panel and cross sectional analysis.

The central finding of the study is that a society's openness to international trade generates, on net, positive effects on economic culture. The more open a country is to trade, the more likely it is to possess culture conducive to economic interaction and entrepreneurship.

This paper contributes to the existing literature by studying the impact of trade openness on culture. While previous studies have asked “Does culture affect economic outcomes?”, this paper explores the answer to the related question, “How does openness to trade affect culture?”.

Analyses and clarifies the concept of federalism outside such limited paradigmatic boundaries and includes the relevant social and economic variables. Applies a holistic and interdisciplinary methodology in the framework of the processes of general culture evolution to interrelate the social, the political and the economic. Compares the West European experiences and the US prototype, to that of the current movement towards an evolving Russian federation. Analyses the apparent positive and centripetal movement towards West European federalism, in the context of the European Union, juxtoposed to the centrifrugal forces evident in the collapse of the USSR. Analyses the current movement towards a Russian federation.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of broad cultural dimensions, as well as those of religion and legal origin, on countries’ economic freedom, i.e., trade freedom, investment freedom, business freedom, labor freedom, monetary freedom, as well as a composite measure of economic freedom.

Linear regression of publicly available data regarding economic freedom (Miller et al., 2018) on cultural dimensions (Hofstede, 2009), legal origin and religion (LaPorta et al., 1999) for 52 countries was performed to determine the impact of these factors on economic freedom.

Results indicated femininity was the cultural dimension associated with the most measures of economic freedom. Short-term-oriented cultures were predictive of greater business freedom, while more restrained cultures were associated with greater business and monetary freedoms. Higher individualism was predictive of greater monetary freedom. Catholicism positively predicted investment freedom and negatively predicted business freedom. French civil law negatively predicted labor freedom, while socialist legal origins positively predicted trade freedom, but negatively predicted business freedom.

This is the first study to examine the impacts of culture, law and religion on economic freedom. One practical implication of this research is that countries would be wise to emphasize more feminine aspects in their cultures, as these are associated with greater economic freedom. Even minor adjustments that move in the direction of cooperation and fair processes might help increase economic freedoms and the many benefits that stem from such freedoms.

This paper seeks to propose a framework that describes how culture evolves and how certain external shocks may or may not cause it to change.

The central point is that culture, like firms and markets, is a type of institution and is, therefore, susceptible to the same sort of analysis applied to other institutional forms. In this study, culture is examined from the game‐equilibrium view of institutions that suggests that norms of behavior are endogenously generated and become self‐enforcing through the repeated interaction of individuals. Two historical examples are offered to assess the proposed framework: the experience of ethnic Malays in Malaysia following independence from Britain, and Brazil's agricultural workers during the early part of the twentieth century.

Conceptualizing culture in institutional terms challenges conventional wisdom, which regards culture as exogenously given. The institutional view of culture permits an evaluation of environmental changes as to the likelihood that they will change generally held beliefs.

To the extent that culture explains, in part, the economic performance of societies, the implication for policy makers is that they do not have to wait patiently for slow cultural change or rely on serendipity to achieve a more productive culture paradigm.

This paper applies concepts from institutional economics to the study of culture evolution and change.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the application of a hermeneutic-based approach as innovative way to study the Cultural Heritage management in a mesoeconomic space.

The paper builds a theoretical framework based on the analysis of relevant literature in the field of cultural economics, heritage economics and conservation and restoration techniques. Then, after having defined the conceptual hypothesis, a hermeneutical interpretative model is designed for the analysis of the processes of Cultural Heritage management with particular regard to the strategies of stakeholder engagement.

The research shows how the mesoeconomic space is that border area where it is possible to solve more easily the conflicts that arise as a result of the different expectations of stakeholders. Hermeneutical analysis, applied in iterative form, allows us to find common connections, points of contact and convergences between the interpretative horizons of the various stakeholders.

The application of the interpretative model allows the identification of the expectations of stakeholders, improving the knowledge of the tangible and intangible attributes of works of art, in order to design appropriate interventions of restoration, conservation and valorization.

The new model of analysis, based on hermeneutic methodology, is designed to understand and describe the social and economic relations between the different stakeholders involved in the management of Cultural Heritage.

This paper examines for the first time the Cultural Heritage sector within the mesoeconomic area between the micro and the macroeconomy. In addition to this mesoeconomic analysis and conceptual approach, the authors introduce as methodology the economic hermeneutics that represents an innovative tool in the field of economic and business disciplines.