Culture in Economics: History, Methodological

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.

List of figures	p. viii
List of tables	p. ix
List of boxes	p. x
Prologue	p. xi
History and methodological reflections	p. 1
Defining culture	p. 3
Introduction	p. 3
Culture as artificial	p. 4
Culture as ideas and worldviews influencing behavior	p. 5
Culture as group distinction	p. 6
Culture as inherited, unquestioned given	p. 8
Competing terms: ideology, institutions, ethnicity, nationality	p. 11
Conclusion: culture in this book	p. 13
How culture disappeared from economics	p. 15
Introduction	p. 15
A history of culture in economics	p. 16
A history of culture vs. economics	p. 36
Conclusion	p. 57
Explaining the rise of culture in modern economics	p. 60
Introduction	p. 60
Modern economics: the cultureless science	p. 63
Culture's comeback	p. 65
Meanwhile, in cultural sciences	p. 77
Conclusion	p. 83
Culture in economics: contemporary theoretical perspectives	p. 85
Introduction	p. 85
Economy and culture	p. 86
Economy as culture	p. 97
Culture as economics	p. 107
The culture of economics	p. 112
Conclusion	p. 117
A methodological perspective on culture in economics	p. 119
Introduction	p. 119
Methodological challenges when including culture in economics	p. 121
Research methods	p. 134
Conclusion	p. 148
Contemporary applications	p. 151
Introduction to Part II	p. 151
Entrepreneurial culture	p. 155
Introduction	p. 155
How to theorize on the entrepreneur and entrepreneurial culture	p. 157
McClelland's seminal study on N achievement	p. 159
Entrepreneurial trait research: unique personality of entrepreneurs	p. 165
Economic Consequences of Entrepreneurial Culture	p. 171
Discussion: linking the individual and the collective	p. 177
Trust	p. 181
Introduction	p. 181
Trust as a proxy for culture	p. 182
Antecedents of trust	p. 188
Trust-growth studies	p. 201
Methodology of the generalized trust question	p. 213
Discussion: from well-tossed spaghetti to multi-layered lasagna	p. 219
International business	p. 226
Introduction	p. 226
Defining the field of international business and how culture fits in	p. 227
Cultural distance: concept, measurement and critique	p. 232
How cultural distance affects type and location of MNE activity	p. 237
Comparative management: managerial values and international cooperation	p. 244
Discussion: how culture matters	p. 250
Comparative corporate governance	p. 254
Introduction	p. 254
Corporate governance systems and legal origin	p. 255
Differences in investor protection regimes	p. 261
From legal origin to culture	p. 270
Critique of the law and finance literature	p. 277
Discussion	p. 282
Evaluation	p. 287
Discussion	p. 289
Introduction	p. 289
Economic individualism vs. cultural collectivism	p. 290
Exogenous structures vs. rational agents	p. 295
Economic universalism and cultural contingency	p. 302
The political-economic dimension	p. 312
Conclusion	p. 315
References	p. 319
Index	p. 371
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Culture in Economics: History, Methodological Reflections and Contemporary Applications

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