This paper provides a framework relating the vertical transmission of characteristics across generations- such as the transmission of culture, language, norms and values- to differences in income per capita across countries. We propose a novel way to measure cultural barriers using genetic distance, i.e. coancestor coefficients from population genetics. Our econometric methodology addresses the problem of spatial correlation inherent in having pairwise income differences as our dependent variable. We find a significant effect of genetic distance on income differences, even when controlling for geographical distance, differences in latitude, and other cultural and geographic distance measures. These results hold not only for contemporary income differences, but also for income differences measured as of 1500 and 1700. We uncover similar patterns of coefficients for the proximate determinants of income differences (differences in human capital, institutions, investment rates and population growth). Our results suggest an important role for vertically transmitted characteristics in the diffusion of development.

Recent studies by economists exploring the nexus between culture and fertility have focused on cultural transmission from the origin country rather than the origin family. Our paper extends this avenue of research by investigating how family-specific ‘cultural transmission ’ can affect fertility rates. In this context, we define ‘culture ’ as referring to intra-family norms, and ‘cultural transmission ’ refers to the transfer of these norms across generations within a family. We also allow for peer-group influences through the inclusion of controls for age cohorts and for non-English speaking country of birth. Following the methodology of Miranda (2005) and Machado and Santos Silva (2005), we estimate count data quantile regression models. Using unique data from the British Household Panel Survey, we find that a woman’s origin-family size is positively associated with her own completed fertility in the destination family and that her country of birth also matters. The effect of origin family size increases as we move from the lower to the upper tail of the conditional fertility distribution. For a sub-sample of continuously partnered men and women, both partners ’ origin-family sizes significantly affect destinationfamily fertility. Our findings are robust to a number of specification checks.

There is economic evidence that diversity has consequences for economic performance (see Alesina and La Ferrara, 2005). This might have consequences for immigration policy – how many immigrants to allow into a country and from what cultural background. But, central to such a discussion is the pace of cultural assimilation among immigrants – this under-researched topic is the focus of this paper. It investigates the extent and determinants of British identity among those living in Britain and the views on rights and responsibilities in societies. We find no evidence for a culture clash in general, and one connected with Muslims in particular. The vast majority of those born in Britain, of whatever ethnicity or religion, think of themselves as British and we find evidence that third-generation immigrants are more likely to think of themselves as British than second generation. Newly arrived immigrants almost never think of themselves as British but the longer they remain in the UK, the more likely it is that they do. This process of assimilation is faster for those from poorer and less democratic countries, even though immigrants from these countries are often regarded as a particular cause for concern. Our analysis of rights and responsibilities finds much smaller differences in views between the UK-born and immigrants than within the UK-born population.

This paper reviews the literature on culture and economics, focusing primarily on the epidemiological approach. The epidemiological approach studies the variation in outcomes across different immigrant groups residing in the same country. Immigrants presumably differ in their cultures but share a common institutional and economic environment. This allows one to separate the effect of culture from the original economic and institutional environment. This approach has been used to study a variety of issues, including female labor force participaiton, fertility, labor market regulation, redistribution, growth, and financial development among others.

This study addresses the apparent puzzle that China achieved spectacular economic performance despite weak institutions. Using a World Bank survey of 1,566 manufacturing enterprises in 18 Chinese cities, we investigated whether property rights protection mattered for enterprise performance. We found that property rights protection had a positive and statistically significant impact on enterprise productivity. Two-step GMM estimation and the difference-in-differences estimation further established the causal impacts of property rights protection on enterprise productivity. These findings were robust to various controls, outliers, and alternative measures of productivity and

We develop a formal theory of interstate conflict in which the degree of genealogical relatedness between populations has a positive effect on their conflict propensities because more closely related populations, on average, tend to interact more and develop more disputes over sets of common rival issues. We examine the empirical relationship between the occurrence of interstate conflicts and the degree of relatedness between countries, showing that populations that are genetically closer are more prone to go to war with each other, even after controlling for a wide set of measures of geographic distance and other factors that affect conflict, including measures of trade and democracy.

There is economic evidence that diversity has consequences for economic performance (see Alesina and La Ferrara, 2005). This might have consequences for immigration policy – how many immigrants to allow into a country and from what cultural background. But, central to such a discussion is the pace of cultural assimilation among immigrants – this under-researched topic is the focus of this paper. It investigates the extent and determinants of British identity among those living in Britain and the views on rights and responsibilities in societies. We find no evidence for a culture clash in general, and one connected with Muslims in particular. The vast majority of those born in Britain, of whatever ethnicity or religion, think of themselves as British and we find evidence that third-generation immigrants are more likely to think of themselves as British than second generation. Newly arrived immigrants almost never think of themselves as British but the longer they remain in the UK, the more likely it is that they do. This process of assimilation is faster for those from poorer and less democratic countries, even though immigrants from these countries are often regarded as a particular cause for concern. Our analysis of rights and responsibilities finds much smaller differences in views between the UK-born and immigrants than within the UK-born population.

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Economists have a well-developed theory of value but the theory of why people hold the values they do is rudimentary at best. In spite of the fact that it is common to argue that values are important, most work on values is normative and the positive theory of values is relatively under- developed. In this paper we propose a simple yet general way to think about values – they are about how one trades-off one own’s utility against that of others – and argue that we can draw on the large literature on pro-social behavior for hypotheses on how people will choose values. Then, using data from the UK’s Citizenship Survey we show how models of self-interest, fairness, reciprocity and identity, can explain many of the patterns that we observe in the data across a wide variety of values.