Culture, Social Norms, and Economics

Economists have often been accused of failing to take full account of culture and social norms in their explanations of human behaviour. Cultural factors are playing an increasingly important role in economic theorizing and are achieving greater recognition as determinants of economic performance. As such these volumes will be a landmark and will provide easy access to the most important articles in this expanding field.

The first volume focuses on modelling the social and cultural aspects of an individual's behaviour. In the second volume this theme develops to consider cooperation in the economic system and the role of culture in supporting this system.

The articles in these volumes explore a diverse range of issues including:

• the differences in achievements between ethnic groups
• the differences between firms from different countries
• the links between religion, community, ethnicity and economic performance.
• the influences of leadership, peer pressure, entrepreneurship, envy, status-seeking and self esteem.