Culture Club
Honour, competition and cooperation across 13 societies
Shuxian Jin et al.
Nature Human Behaviour, forthcoming
Abstract:
Effectively addressing societal challenges often requires unrelated individuals to reduce conflict and successfully coordinate actions. The cultural logic of ‘honour’ is frequently studied in relation to conflict, but its role in competition and cooperation remains underexplored. The current study investigates how perceived normative and personally endorsed honour values predict competition and cooperation behaviours. In an online experiment testing preregistered hypotheses, 3,371 participants from 13 societies made incentivized competition decisions in a contest game and cooperation decisions for coordination in a step-level public goods game. Perceived normative honour values were associated with greater competition and greater cooperation at both societal and individual levels. Personally endorsing values tied to defence of family reputation was associated with greater coordinative efforts, whereas endorsing self-promotion and retaliation was associated with weaker engagement in coordination. These findings highlight the role of honour as a cultural logic (in its different forms) in shaping competition and cooperation across societies.
Roots of Cultural and Linguistic Traits
Oded Galor, Ömer Özak & Assaf Sarid
Economic Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines the roots of the coevolution of cultural and linguistic traits. It advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that geographical characteristics conducive to the emergence of fundamental cultural traits triggered the evolution of complementary linguistic traits, thereby reinforcing their adaptation process. In particular, (i) higher caloric returns to agriculture, which fostered engagement in farming and the evolution of long-term orientation, have been conducive to the prevalence of periphrastic future tense; (ii) land suitability for plough use, which generated gender gaps in agricultural productivity and entrenched gender bias in society, has been associated with the existence of sex-based grammatical gender; and (iii) ecological diversity, which promoted the establishment of hierarchical societies, has been conducive to the presence of politeness distinctions.
Not That Important Why You Did It: Causal Attribution Matters Less for Interdependent People in Judgment of Blame, Punishment, Rehabilitation, and Perceived Likelihood of Reintegration
BoKyung Park et al.
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
People in interdependent cultures explain others’ behavior less through internal traits and more through external situations than those in independent cultures. Criminal justice research suggests that this should make people more lenient. They should blame less, punish less, support rehabilitation more, and perceive offenders to have less risk to re-offend. Yet, studies across cultures contradict this theoretical prediction. We address this contradiction by proposing the idea that culture shapes how much people consider the causal attribution of offenders’ behaviors. Across two studies, compared to those from independent cultures (i.e., European Americans), participants from interdependent cultures (i.e., Asians/Asian Americans) relied less on their causal attribution when determining blame (Studies 1A, 1B), as well as punishment, support for rehabilitation, and likelihood of offenders’ re-offense (Studies 2A, 2B). Next, we asked people how well they thought offenders could reintegrate into society after they had received punishment and underwent rehabilitation (Study 3). Causal attributions for offenders’ past crimes still had more influence on European Americans’ reintegration predictions than those of Asians/Asian Americans. Together, these studies suggest that culture shapes not just the types of attributions people make but also how much they consider those attributions when they decide how to respond to criminal acts.
Saving behavior and the intergenerational allocation of leisure time
Fabio Cerina & Xavier Raurich
Journal of Macroeconomics, December 2025
Abstract:
We study how cross-country cultural differences in the intergenerational allocation of leisure time affect savings and working time. To do so, we consider a life-cycle model in which leisure and consumption are complementary and individuals decide on the intertemporal allocation of consumption, on leisure time and on its allocation among individuals of the same generation or of a different one. The latter decision margin determines the equilibrium utility services from leisure that individuals obtain in each life time period. We show that economies in which older individuals obtain higher leisure services have higher savings rates, higher stock of capital per worker and higher fraction of time worked. Using data from the World Value Survey, we provide empirical support to these findings. Our results suggest that cultural differences in leisure allocation play a structural role in shaping cross-country differences in savings and labor supply.
Individualism, institutions, and patriarchal attitudes
Lewis Davis & Claudia Williamson Kramer
Journal of Institutional Economics, October 2025
Abstract:
This study examines how individualism influences patriarchal gender norms across 93 countries, using data from the Integrated Values Surveys. We hypothesize that individualism, emphasizing personal autonomy and egalitarian values, reduces patriarchal attitudes directly and indirectly through formal institutions. Our findings reveal a robust negative association between individualism and patriarchal attitudes, with a one-standard deviation increase in individualism linked to a 0.78 standard deviation decrease in patriarchal attitudes. This association holds across various controls and instrumental variable techniques addressing endogeneity. Mediation analysis shows that institutions, particularly liberal democracy and legal gender parity, mediate 5% to 37% of this association. These results underscore individualism’s role in promoting egalitarian gender norms and suggest that culturally aligned institutional reforms, such as strengthening women’s economic rights or democratic participation, can amplify these effects.
Are We in the Same Boat? The Legacy of Historical Emigration on Attitudes Towards Immigration
Erminia Florio
Journal of Regional Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
I analyze the effect of historical emigration on current attitudes towards immigrants and migration policies in central and southern Italy. To do so, I collect data on Italian emigrants by the municipality of last residence from the Ellis Island archives in the period 1892–1924. I estimate, then, the causal effect of emigration on a series of outcomes used to measure attitudes towards immigration through an IV strategy, by exploiting exogenous variation in proximity to departure port to the U.S. during the years 1892-1924. I find that emigration has a negative and significant long-run effect on attitudes towards immigration. In particular, higher historical emigration reduces the propensity to open refugees reception centers, social expenditure, volunteers in non-profit organizations and significantly decreases political support for more inclusive parties.
Cultural Origins of Risk Taking in Financial Markets
Andreas Ek, Gunes Gokmen & Kaveh Majlesi
Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper studies how cultural heritage influences the differences in risk taking in financial markets. We combine data on the asset allocation of second-generation immigrants in Sweden with risk taking culture in their parents’ countries of origin. We find that descendants of risk loving cultures are more likely to participate in equity markets, and, conditional on participation, allocate a larger share of financial wealth to equities. Moreover, they take on more idiosyncratic risk by favoring directly held stocks over mutual funds and forming more volatile portfolios. These findings are not driven by selective migration or other country of origin characteristics.
Do Culture and Law Interact? Evidence From Business Regulation
Lewis Davis & Claudia Williamson Kramer
Southern Economic Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
Countries with individualist cultures tend to adopt fewer business regulations. In this paper, we investigate how individualism affects regulation by incorporating the role of legal institutions. We hypothesize that a common law legal tradition is more responsive to cultural preferences than a civil law tradition. Consequently, we anticipate that individualism and common law interact as complements, reducing the intensity of regulating businesses. Using data from the Integrated Values Surveys for individualism and the World Bank's Doing Business Project for regulation, we find that the impact of culture on regulation is significantly amplified in common law countries, decreasing regulation in individualist countries but increasing it in collectivist ones. This holds across types of regulations and is robust to various controls and instrumental variable analysis. Additional tests show the interaction is stronger in court-involved regulations and mediated by judicial review, supporting common law's relative adaptability. These findings align with the theoretical proposition that culture shapes regulatory preferences, while legal institutions determine the extent to which these preferences translate into policy outcomes. Furthermore, our findings refine legal origins theory, emphasizing common law's cultural sensitivity rather than inherent superiority.