Social Culture and Economic Performance
American Economic Review · 2001 · Volume 91 · Issue 4
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.
Keywords
Economic Sociology, Economic Anthropology, Wage Level and Structure, Wage Differentials, Technological Change: Choices and Consequences, Diffusion Processes
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