THE ECONOMICS OF CULTURAL TRANSMISSION AND SOCIALIZATION



ABSTRACT
Cultural transmission arguably plays an important role in the determination of many fundamental preference
traits (e.g., discounting, risk aversion and altruism) and most cultural traits, social norms, and ideological
tenets ( e.g., attitudes towards family and fertility practices, and attitudes in the job market). It is, however,
the pervasive evidence of the resilience of ethnic and religious traits across generations that motivates
a large fraction of the theoretical and empirical literature on cultural transmission. This article reviews
the main contributions of models of cultural transmission, from theoretical and empirical perspectives.
It presents their implications regarding the long-run population dynamics of cultural traits and cultural
heterogeneity, the world's geographical fragmentation by ethic and religious traits, at any given time.
Finally, the paper reviews the empirical literature which estimates various properties of cultural transmission
mechanisms as well as the population dynamics of specific traits.
Alberto Bisin
Department of Economics
New York University
19 West 4th Street, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10012
and NBER
alberto.bisin@nyu.edu
Thierry Verdier
Paris-Jourdan Sciences Economiques
48 Boulevard Jourdan
75014 Paris FRANCE
verdier@pse.ens.fr