The Economics of Cultural Formation of Preferences

This paper introduces a generalized representation of the formation of continuous preferences (which can reflect different intensities). The preference intensity that a child adopts is formed as the collective outcome of all role models for preference intensities - which are derived from the socioeconomic actions of adults - that it socially learns from. We then show how the adopted preference intensities induce preferences over socioeconomic choices. Finally, this cultural formation of preferences process is endogenized as resulting out of optimal parental socialization decisions. This framework thus endogenously determines the intergenerational evolution of preference intensities and the induced preferences.Socialization, Preference Evolution, Endogenous Preferences, Cultural transmission

Cultural Formation of Preferences and Assimilation of Cultural Groups

Based on the cultural formation of continuous preferences framework of Pichler (IMW Working Paper No. 431, 2010), this paper analyzes the evolution of preferences and behavior in a two cultural groups setting. We show that the qualitative dynamic properties depend crucially on what parents perceive as the optimal preferences for their children to adopt. Under inter– generationally fixed optimal preferences, the preferences of the cultural groups will always stay distinct. If the optimal preferences coincide with those derived from the representative group behavior, then a multitude of convergence path types can realize. These contain both an inter–generational assimilation process toward the same preference point, as well as inter–generational dissimilation.Continuous Preferences, Assimilation, Cultural Groups, Endogenous Preferences, Preference Evolution, Socialization

Culture formation and endogenous cultural distance

Pichler M. Culture formation and endogenous cultural distance. Working Papers. Institute of Mathematical Economics. Vol 403. Bielefeld: Universität Bielefeld; 2008.This paper introduces a new approach to "cultural transmission of preferences" (see Bisin and Verdier, 2000, 2001). It is based on the conceptualization of the culture of a person as a set of cultural values and attitudes, represented as an n-dimensional tuple in Euclidean space. The culture of a person is formed through social learning and imitation from role-models, which correspond to the chosen "displayed cultures" of parents ("vertical transmission") and the society at large ("oblique transmission"). Parents might choose a "displayed culture" that does not coincide with their true culture, since they aim at countervailing negative cultural influences that their children are exposed to in the society at large. Additionally, they can invest into the success that their displayed culture has in the socialization process of their children. We will consider in the present paper an OLG model with two cultural groups, and where in any period, the members of each of the cultural groups have identical culture. We show that if parents have a desire for cultural closeness to their children (e.g. "imperfect empathy"), then they will always behave culturally more "radical" relative to the culture of the other cultural group. Furthermore, they will always invest into their socialization success. Nevertheless, these investments are never sufficient to let the distance between the future cultures of the children of both cultural groups be larger or equal than the cultural distance of the parental generation. As a consequence, the cultures of both groups converge to a homogeneous steady state culture, which can be interpreted as a mixture of the two initial cultures. This result corresponds to the "melting pot" theory of integration of cultural groups

The “Diktat für Schlick”: Authorship Research and Computational Stylometry Revisited

Forthcoming in: Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle , ed. Friedrich Stadler. Springer.Both the authorship and the dating of the so-called “Diktat für Schlick” (DFS), once attributed to Ludwig Wittgenstein and assigned by Georg Henrik von Wright to the Wittgenstein Nachlass as item 302, are debated topics in Wittgenstein and Vienna Circle research. Schulte (2011) and Manninen (2011) hold that DFS was authored by Friedrich Waismann rather than Wittgenstein. Applying techniques from computational stylometry to the authorship question, the paper concludes that DFS is located stylometrically in the middle between Waismann’s and Wittgenstein’s writings, but slightly closer to Wittgenstein, and so Wittgenstein authorship is hence stylometrically still not unlikely. The paper concludes by presenting a number of factors that speak in favour of the view that DFS might originally indeed have been dictated by Wittgenstein. For the computational stylometry component, the paper uses the Eder, Rybicki and Kestemont’s (2016) “Stylometry with R” package; the degree of similarity and dissimilarity between documents is calculated by Burrows' Delta measure; and the results are displayed using Hierarchical Cluster Analysis and Principal Components Analysis. For the text corpus part, the paper uses texts authored by Schlick, Waismann and Wittgenstein. For the archival research part, the paper refers to materials form the Schlick Nachlass in the North Holland Archives, the Waismann Nachlass in the Bodleian Libraries, the Rose Rand Nachlass in the Pittsburgh Archives of Scientific Philosophy, the Ludwig Wittgenstein Nachlass in the Trinity College Cambridge Wren Library, and the Cornell copy of the Ludwig Wittgenstein Nachlass. The paper is a follow-up on Oakes and Pichler (2013); for the current paper we have extended the Waismann text corpus with more texts written under the influence of Wittgenstein, a.o. Logik, Sprache, Philosophie (1976).submittedVersio

The Politics of Related Lending

This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.We analyze the profitability of government-owned banks’ lending to their owners, using a unique data set of relatively homogeneous government-owned banks; the banks are all owned by similarly structured local governments in a single country. Making use of a natural experiment that altered the regulatory and competitive environment, we find evidence that such lending was used to transfer revenues from the banks to the governments. Some of the evidence is particularly pronounced in localities where the incumbent politicians face significant competition for reelection.Peer Reviewe

Cultural Formation of Preferences and Assimilation of Cultural Groups

Pichler M. Cultural Formation of Preferences and Assimilation of Cultural Groups. Working Papers. Institute of Mathematical Economics. Vol 438. Bielefeld: Center for Mathematical Economics; 2010.Based on the cultural formation of continuous preferences framework of Pichler [16], this paper analyzes the evolution of preferences and behavior in a two cultural groups setting. We show that the qualitative dynamic properties depend crucially on what parents perceive as the optimal preferences for their children to adopt. Under inter– generationally fixed optimal preferences, the preferences of the cultural groups will always stay distinct. If the optimal preferences coincide with those derived from the representative group behavior, then a multitude of convergence path types can realize. These contain both an inter–generational assimilation process toward the same preference point, as well as inter–generational dissimilation