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The Cultural Roots of Institutions

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Author Info
Mariko Klasing ()

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Abstract

Do political institutions have cultural roots? Using a novel data set of cultural values we show that culture, defined as a society's collective beliefs and values, is an important determinant of institutions. We argue that the traditional proxies for culture used in the existing literature suffer from conceptual problems and find that they do not survive several robustness checks. Our results suggest, that individualist societies and societies with preference for a more equal distribution of power set up institutions that better protect individual property rights, place more constraints on governments and have more effective governments. We find that our measures of culture are robust to the inclusion of other control variables and across different samples and that they always dominate the effects of the traditional proxies.

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File URL: http://www.vwa.unisg.ch/RePEc/usg/dp2008/DP-24-Kl.pdf
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Publisher Info
Paper provided by Department of Economics, University of St. Gallen in its series University of St. Gallen Department of Economics working paper series 2008 with number 2008-24.

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Length: 36 pages
Date of creation: Nov 2008
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Handle: RePEc:usg:dp2008:2008-24

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Related research
Keywords: Institutions; political institutions; culture; cultural values;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
D02 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Institutions: Design, Formation, and Operations
F55 - International Economics - - International Relations and International Political Economy - - - International Institutional Arrangements
O17 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Formal and Informal Sectors; Shadow Economy; Institutional Arrangements
P00 - Economic Systems - - General - - - General
P51 - Economic Systems - - Comparative Economic Systems - - - Comparative Analysis of Economic Systems

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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Mariko Klasing, 2008. "Culturally Risk Averse? – A Model of Economic Growth with Endogenous Culture," University of St. Gallen Department of Economics working paper series 2008 2008-23, Department of Economics, University of St. Gallen. [Downloadable!]
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