76 research outputs found
Adoption as a Social Marker: Innovation Diffusion with Outgroup Aversion
Social identities are among the key factors driving behavior in complex
societies. Signals of social identity are known to influence individual
behaviors in the adoption of innovations. Yet the population-level consequences
of identity signaling on the diffusion of innovations are largely unknown. Here
we use both analytical and agent-based modeling to consider the spread of a
beneficial innovation in a structured population in which there exist two
groups who are averse to being mistaken for each other. We investigate the
dynamics of adoption and consider the role of structural factors such as
demographic skew and communication scale on population-level outcomes. We find
that outgroup aversion can lead to adoption being delayed or suppressed in one
group, and that population-wide underadoption is common. Comparing the two
models, we find that differential adoption can arise due to structural
constraints on information flow even in the absence of intrinsic between-group
differences in adoption rates. Further, we find that patterns of polarization
in adoption at both local and global scales depend on the details of
demographic organization and the scale of communication. This research has
particular relevance to widely beneficial but identity-relevant products and
behaviors, such as green technologies, where overall levels of adoption
determine the positive benefits that accrue to society at large.Comment: 26 pages, 10 figure
Federalism as a Public Good
This paper suggests that stabilizing federalism is like solving a public good provision problem. It reviews results in the public good provision literature that are relevant for federalism, and discusses the implications of these results for the institutional design of federalism.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/44798/1/10602_2005_Article_2235.pd
Making Sense of Institutional Change in China: The Cultural Dimension of Economic Growth and Modernization
Building on a new model of institutions proposed by Aoki and the systemic approach to economic civilizations outlined by Kuran, this paper attempts an analysis of the cultural foundations of recent Chinese economic development. I argue that the cultural impact needs to be conceived as a creative process that involves linguistic entities and other public social items in order to provide integrative meaning to economic interactions and identities to different agents involved. I focus on three phenomena that stand at the center of economic culture in China, networks, localism and modernism. I eschew the standard dualism of individualism vs. collectivism in favour of a more detailed view on the self in social relationships. The Chinese pattern of social relations, guanxi, is also a constituent of localism, i.e. a peculiar arrangement and resulting dynamics of central-local interactions in governing the economy. Localism is balanced by culturalist controls of the center, which in contemporary China builds on the worldview of modernism. Thus, economic modernization is a cultural phenomenon on its own sake. I summarize these interactions in a process analysis based on Aoki's framework
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Prosociality, Federalism, and Cultural Evolution
Constitutions are more than their text; a constitution is also a set of conventions, or expectations that constituents have about one another's behavior. That is, constitutions have a culture. The coherence between the constitutional law and constitutional culture determine a constitution's success. Constitutional culture and constitutional law co-evolve; by understanding the influence of multiple institutions, one may make predictions about the likelihood of the emergence of a prosocial constitutional culture. There are reasons to believe that federalism might encourage the development of a prosocial constitutional culture, but the effect is far from certain.This essay concludes with questions to consider in while assessing Afghanistan's prospects for constitutional success
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