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  1. Home
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  3. Culture in Economics
  • Cited by 58
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
February 2011
Print publication year:
2010
Online ISBN:
9780511761539
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511761539
Subjects:
Economics, Economic Thought, Philosophy and Methodology, Political Economy, Politics and International Relations
Information

Book description

Many economists now accept that informal institutions and culture play a crucial role in economic outcomes. Driven by the work of economists like Nobel laureates Douglass North and Gary Becker, there is an important body of work that invokes cultural and institutional factors to build a more comprehensive and realistic theory of economic behavior. This book provides a comprehensive overview of research in this area, sketching the main premises and challenges faced by the field. The first part introduces and explains the various theoretical approaches to studying culture in economics, going back to Smith and Weber, and addresses the methodological issues that need to be considered when including culture in economics. The second part of the book then provides readers with a series of examples that show how the cultural approach can be used to explain economic phenomena in four different areas: entrepreneurship, trust, international business and comparative corporate governance.

Reviews

‘This important new book on culture in economics by Sjoerd Beugelsdijk and Robbert Maseland is most welcome. It fills an important gap in the literature that has only recently been recognised. After decades of sceptical methodological isolationism, economists have come to accept that without reference to people’s systems of norms and beliefs a large part of the differences in performance across populations would go unexplained. I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in truly understanding economics.’

Luigi Guiso - Professor of Economics, European University Institute

‘Economic science has its roots in Anglo-American cultural values. With an increasing share of world economic power slipping out of Western hands, there is a crying need for an economic science in which cultural values are treated as a variable. [This] book by Beugelsdijk and Maseland is a welcome contribution to this development.’

Geert Hofstede - author of Culture's Consequences

‘A new literature in economics has rediscovered fundamental insights in sociology and is using them to address long standing economic problems. This book does a superb job in placing this new line of research in a broader context, explaining its deep roots and how it opens up fundamental methodological issues. A very timely book that will have a lasting impact on one of the most exciting areas of research in the social sciences.’

Guido Tabellini - Professor of Economics, Bocconi University

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