A people's culture, norms and habits are important determinants not just of the quality of social life but of economic progress and growth. In this paper we take the view that while the importance of culture is undeniable, the innateness of culture is not. We work here with a single example and demonstrate how a human trait which is widely believed to be cultural is at the same time a matter of choice. The example that we shall work with concerns punctuality. We show that punctuality may be simply an equilibrium response of individuals to what they expect others to do. The same society can get caught in a punctual equilibrium or a non-punctual equilibrium.
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Paper provided by Research Institute of Industrial Economics in its series Working Paper Series with number
582.
Length: 18 pages Date of creation: 10 Jun 2002 Date of revision: Publication status: Published as the book Punctuality - A Cultural Trait as an Equilibrium, 2003, in R. Arnott et al. (eds.), Economics for an Imperfect World: Essays in Honor of Joseph Stiglitz, MIT Press, Cambridge USA. Handle: RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:0582
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Find related papers by JEL classification: C62 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods and Programming - - - Existence and Stability Conditions of Equilibrium C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games D29 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Other D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations
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