Abstract
To unravel the roots of the relationship between the individualism–collectivism dimension of culture (IC) and market-supporting institutions, we develop a model where the two interact and coevolve. IC and institutions are related indirectly via social organization: agents settle either in the Town, a loose organization where they work independently, or in the Clan, a cohesive organization where they engage in collective work. The town’s relative economic potential positively affects the town’s size and institutional quality. A larger town then renders society more individualistic, which attracts even more agents to the town and improves its institutional quality. The resulting positive feedback loop drives societies toward different steady states. If the town’s relative economic potential is sufficiently high, the society converges to a steady state with a completely individualistic culture, high institutional quality, and a large town. Otherwise, the society converges to a steady state with a completely collectivistic culture, weak institutions, and a large clan. We conclude that contemporary IC and institutions exhibit path dependence and are thus related to the historical exogenous conditions in each region. Using current and historical data, we provide empirical evidence supporting our model. In addition, we apply the model to discuss the historical divergence between China and Europe.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Culture is defined as “information capable of affecting individuals’ behavior that they acquire from other members of their species through teaching, imitation, and other forms of social transmission” (Richerson & Boyd, 2005) Institutions, broadly defined, are mechanisms through which social choices are determined and implemented (see Acemoglu et al., 2006). For studies that emphasized the role of culture, see, for instance, Alesina et al. (2013), Figlio et al. (2019), and Galor and Özak (2016). For studies highlighting the role of institutions, see Acemoglu et al. (2001, 2002), Acemoglu and Robinson (2012), Dell (2010), North (1990), and Rodrik et al. (2004).
The data on institutions is taken from The IPD data set (Bertho, 2013) and the data on individualism is taken from Hofstede et al. (2010). The regressions account for regional fixed effects, geographical characteristics (absolute latitude, mean ruggedness, agricultural suitability, total length of coasts, and the minimal distance from either the coast or a major river), and historical characteristics (ancestry-adjusted years since the Neolithic revolution, state antiquity, and colonial history).
We use the terms town and clan to denote two types of social organizations rather than distinguish between urban and rural settlements. Historically, many loose, interest-based organizations, which we refer to as towns, existed in the countryside (see, e.g., Brenner, 1976; De Moor, 2008), while urban clans were also not uncommon (Watson, 1982).
In the online appendix, we further show a negative correlation between market-supporting institutions and irrigation suitability, which is another possible proxy for the clan’s relative economic potential (the inverse of the town’s relative economic potential).
Rather than IC, Acemoglu and Robinson (2021) define a new dichotomy between “hardwired” and “fluid” cultures, where the former are the ones that mitigate institutional change. They further note that despite this disadvantage, hardwired cultures have an advantage in coordination among individuals who share the same culture. However, to us, it makes more sense to associate this advantage with collectivism (as in, e.g., Greif, 1994) rather than with hardwiredness: if, for example, the values held by the hardwired culture are purely individualistic (“do what is good for you”), then this hardwiredness will most likely inhibit rather than promote coordination.
As we show in our historical survey (see Sect. 4.2), Chinese clans were the loci of collective economic activities, whereas, in Europe, the towns’ residents usually engaged in independent work.
At this stage, the agent’s decision does not depend on what others do, so he simply settles in the location where he is expected to get higher utility.
This approach is prevalent in the literature. See, for instance, Persson and Tabellini (2021).
Medieval institutions in Europe, such as merchant guilds, indeed often charged entry fees. See the discussion in Sect. 4.3.
As was the case with exogenous institutions, all agents who settle in the town receive the same utility. Thus, any standard social choice rule would elicit the same fee.
Note that within a continuum of agents, the actions of any given agent do not affect others, so he is not strategic.
Note that \(1*(1-|{\mathcal {C}}_t|)+0*|{\mathcal {C}}_t| = 1-|{\mathcal {C}}_t|\) is the average action in period t and is also the Town’s size.
To keep the analysis tractable, we assume that the agent’s individualistic inclination does not depend on his place of birth. This assumption, alongside the exogeneity of \(\psi \), implies that a parent does not affect the offspring’s individualistic inclination and, thus, the offspring’s utility. Thus, the agent’s optimal choice, characterized in Sect. 3.2, remains unchanged.
Note that \({\underline{\lambda }}_t\) and \({\bar{\lambda }}_t\) depend on \({\bar{\theta }}_t\) and \({\underline{\theta }}_t\), respectively. Hence, dynamic changes in the two bounds of the cultural-trait distribution, \({\bar{\theta }}_t\), and \({\underline{\theta }}_t\), would lead to changes in \({\underline{\lambda }}_t\) and \({\bar{\lambda }}_t\) as well. In addition, \({\underline{\lambda }}_t\) and \({\bar{\lambda }}_t\) depend on the parameters \(\lambda \), \(\alpha \), and \(\psi \). Let us consider each in turn. First, \(\lambda \) affects the clan’s size, \(|{\mathcal {C}}_{t-1}|\), which itself determines the bounds of the cultural-trait distribution, \({\bar{\theta }}_t\) and \({\underline{\theta }}_t\) (see Eq. 15). These two bounds then affect \({\underline{\lambda }}_t\) and \({\bar{\lambda }}_t\), respectively. Second, \(\alpha \) affects \({\underline{\lambda }}_t\) and \({\bar{\lambda }}_t\) both directly and indirectly, through its effect on \(|{\mathcal {C}}_{t-1}|\). Finally, \(\psi \) affects \({\underline{\lambda }}_t\) and \({\bar{\lambda }}_t\) through its effect on \({\bar{\theta }}_t\) and \({\underline{\theta }}_t\) (see Eq. 15).
As noted in footnote 14, \(\lambda \) affects the two bounds, \({\underline{\lambda }}_t\) and \({\bar{\lambda }}_t\), through its effect on \({\bar{\theta }}_t\) and \({\underline{\theta }}_t\), respectively. Hence, \({\bar{\lambda }}_T\) is a function of \(\lambda \) as well.
See Online Appendix A. Since the relationship between \(\psi \) and \({\tilde{\lambda }}(\alpha , \psi )\) is complex and bears little importance in our analysis, we do not discuss it here.
While in this section, we focus on the coevolution of culture and institutions, the relationship between the exogenous conditions, namely \(\lambda \), and both culture and institutions is empirically analyzed in Sect. 5.
Attitudes toward ancestors are closely related to IC, and societies that attach great importance to ancestors tend to be more collectivistic. Ancestor worship, which emphasizes the group’s common origins, both reflects and reinforces group consciousness and social cohesion (see Keightley (1990)).
This Confucian formulation of the “Golden Rule” goes beyond the liberal Harm Principle. The latter is essentially prohibitive, restricting harmful types of behavior. The former, on the other hand, also has a positive content, encouraging individuals to love actively, care for and empathize with others (see, e.g., Sta. Maria, 2017).
By the late medieval period, Christianity had become highly ritualized, characterized by a complex system of ceremonies and practices. However, personal faith remained an important religious tenet (see, e.g., Morris, 1987).
See Watson (1982) and Ebrey et al. (1986) for a discussion of the different types of kinship-based organizations. In this study, we contrast two types of social organizations: those based on kinship and the ones based on individual interests, and, thus, abstract from possible variations within each type. Hence, throughout the study, we use two generic terms, clan and town, to denote these two types.
A common term for interest-based social organizations is corporation (see, e.g., Greif, 2006a). However, in this study, we focus on a specific kind of corporation: permanent settlements that were the loci of different economic activities. Since this leaves out other types of corporations, such as monasteries and universities, the term town seems adequate.
See Pirenne (2014) for a detailed account of the economic structure of medieval towns in Europe.
The socio-psychological utility agents derive from settling in the clan, \(1-\theta ^i\), captures this sense of affiliation and commitment.
The idea that codification is a prerequisite for legal development is based on two reasons. First, codification facilitates the accumulation of legal knowledge, which can later be applied to improve the system. Second, written laws make adjudication more logical and less arbitrary, rendering the verdict more predictable. See Berman (1983) for a detailed analysis of legal development in Europe.
The fee, \(\tau \), we introduce in Sect. 3.2 of our model aims to reflect this historical fact.
Two notes are in place here. First, we assumed that the cultural-trait distribution was initially identical in all societies. However, our model suggests that differences in \(\lambda \) generated cultural dissimilarities across societies in the early stages of development. Our data on the historical levels of individualism attempts to capture these dissimilarities. For simplicity, we set the time indicator of historical individualism at these early stages to be \(t=0\). Second, the data do not capture the historical cultural variation within each society. Hence, in the following empirical analysis, the cultural-trait distribution is represented by a single value, which may be the society’s average individualistic inclination. We denote the historical average inclination of society i by \(\theta _{0,i}\).
See Bertho (2013) for more details on this database.
For some of the indicators, we had to reverse the order so that higher scores would consistently reflect higher institutional quality.
Indeed, building on this notion, The Rice Theory (Talhelm et al., 2014) argues that societies that cultivated rice became more collectivistic than the ones that cultivated other cereals.
Boserup (1965), for instance, estimated that the hours required for rice cultivation are thrice as much as those required for wheat cultivation.
The list of each region’s crops, presented in Table B.3, are based on Galor and Özak (2015).
For each crop, the Global Agro-Ecological Zones (GAEZ) provides estimates for crop yield based on three alternative levels of inputs—high, medium, and low—and two possible water supply sources—rain-fed and irrigation. Moreover, for each input-water source category, it provides two separate estimates for crop yield based on agro-climatic conditions, which are arguably unaffected by human intervention, and agro-ecological constraints, which could potentially reflect human intervention. The FAO dataset provides the potential yield for each crop for each cell in the agro-climatic grid. These estimates account for the effect of temperature and moisture on the crop’s growth, the impact of pests, diseases, and weeds on the yield, as well as climatic-related “workability constraints.” In addition, each cell includes estimates of the growth cycle for each crop, capturing the days elapsed from planting to harvesting.
The caloric content of each crop is based on estimates of the United States Department of Agriculture Nutrient Database for Standard Reference.
Importantly, since rice was introduced to the New World only after the Columbian Exchange, for the New World countries, we calculate the cereals’ maximal caloric yield without deducting the maximal caloric yield of rice.
We do so because, as Putterman and Weil (2010) note, people retain their cultural values as they migrate.
In Online Appendix C, we explain how we constructed the index and provide a few additional examples of individualistic and collectivistic motifs.
A potential concern is that the country’s total number of motifs may distort our measure. To address this concern, we follow Michalopoulos and Xue (2021) and include the total number of motifs as a control in our regressions. For robustness, we construct an additional measure, dividing the difference between the number of individualistic and collectivistic motifs by the number of total motifs in each country. The results remain qualitatively unchanged.
Specifically, we calculate the great circle distance of each country to the coast or a major river (taking the minimum of the two). Data on rivers are from Natural Earth (2012), which categorizes rivers by their size from 1 to 11. Major rivers are defined as the ones with sizes between 1 and 7.
All these controls are measured as ancestry-adjusted, based on the Ethnographic Atlas.
Omitting this control slightly increases the coefficient of historical individualism, and it remains significant at the 1%.
Controlling for legal origins fixed effect does not change the results qualitatively. Table B.4 replicates Table 1, displaying all the coefficients for the controls used.
Table B.1 presents the descriptive statistics of these two groups of institutions.
These include Ease of Market Functioning, and Security of Transactions and Contracts.
The significant one belongs to the Civil Union indicator.
References
Acemoglu, D. & Robinson, J. A. (2012). Why nations fail: The origins of power, prosperity, and poverty, Currency.
Acemoglu, D., & Robinson, J. A. (2021). Culture, institutions and social equilibria: A framework. Technical report, National Bureau of Economic Research.
Acemoglu, D., Johnson, S. & Robinson, J. (2006). Understanding prosperity and poverty: Geography, institutions and the reversal of fortune, Understanding poverty (pp. 19–36).
Acemoglu, D., Johnson, S., & Robinson, J. A. (2001). The colonial origins of comparative development: An empirical investigation. The American Economic Review, 91(5), 1369–1401.
Acemoglu, D., Johnson, S., & Robinson, J. A. (2002). Reversal of fortune: Geography and institutions in the making of the modern world income distribution. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 117(4), 1231–1294.
Acemoglu, D., & Robinson, J. (2022). Non-modernization: Power-culture trajectories and the dynamics of political institutions. Annual Review of Political Science, 25, 323–339.
Ahern, E. M. (1973). The cult of the dead in a Chinese village. Stanford University Press.
Ahern, E. M. (1976). Segmentation in Chinese lineages: A view through written genealogies. American Ethnologist, 3, 1–16.
Akbari, M., Bahrami-Rad, D., & Kimbrough, E. O. (2019). Kinship, fractionalization and corruption. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 166, 493–528.
Alesina, A., Giuliano, P., & Nunn, N. (2013). On the origins of gender roles: Women and the plough. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 128(2), 469–530.
Ang, J. B. (2019). Agricultural legacy and individualistic culture. Journal of Economic Growth, 24(4), 397–425.
Ang, J. B. (2019). Culture, legal origins, and financial development. Economic Inquiry, 57(2), 1016–1037.
Assmann, D., & Ehrl, P. (2021). Individualistic culture and entrepreneurial opportunities. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 188, 1248–1268.
Bennett, D. L., & Nikolaev, B. (2021). Historical disease prevalence, cultural values, and global innovation. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 45(1), 145–174.
Benson, B. L. (1989). The spontaneous evolution of commercial law. Southern Economic Journal, 55, 644–661.
Berezkin, Y. E. (2015). Folklore and mythology catalogue: Its lay-out and potential for research. The Retrospective Methods Network, S10, 58–70.
Berman, H. J. (1983). The formation of the western legal tradition. Harvard University Press.
Bertho, F. (2013). Presentation of the institutional profiles database 2012. Documents de Travail de la DG Trésor, 3, 1–20.
Bisin, A., & Verdier, T. (2017). On the joint evolution of culture and institutions. Technical report, National Bureau of Economic Research.
Bisin, A., Rubin, J., Seror, A., & Verdier, T. (2021). Culture, institutions & the long divergence. Technical report, National Bureau of Economic Research.
Bloch, M., Manyon, L., & Koziol, G. (2014). Feudal society. Routledge.
Boserup, E. (1965). The conditions of agricultural growth: The economics of, Agrarian change under population pressure.
Bowles, S., & Choi, J.-K. (2019). The neolithic agricultural revolution and the origins of private property. Journal of Political Economy, 127(5), 2186–2228.
Brenner, R. (1976). Agrarian class structure and economic development in pre-industrial Europe. Past & Present, 70(1), 30–75.
Brown, P. (2012). The rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and diversity, AD 200–1000 (Vol. 3). Wiley.
Buechel, B., Hellmann, T., & Pichler, M. M. (2014). The dynamics of continuous cultural traits in social networks. Journal of Economic Theory, 154, 274–309.
Buggle, J. C. (2020). Growing collectivism: Irrigation, group conformity and technological divergence. Journal of Economic Growth, 25(2), 147–193.
Chen, Z., Ma, C., & Sinclair, A. J. (2022). Banking on the Confucian clan: Why China developed financial markets so late. The Economic Journal, 132(644), 1378–1413.
Conley, T. G. (1999). GMM estimation with cross sectional dependence. Journal of econometrics, 92(1), 1–45.
Davis, L. (2012). Individualism and economic development: Evidence from rainfall data. Manuscript Union College.
De Moor, T. (2008). The silent revolution: A new perspective on the emergence of commons, guilds, and other forms of corporate collective action in western Europe. International Review of Social History, 53(S16), 179–212.
Dell, M. (2010). The persistent effects of Peru’s mining Mita. Econometrica, 78(6), 1863–1903.
Ebrey, P. B., Watson, J. L., et al. (1986). Kinship organization in late imperial China, 1000–1940 (Vol. 5). Univ of California Press.
Enke, B. (2019). Kinship, cooperation, and the evolution of moral systems. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 134(2), 953–1019.
Figlio, D., Giuliano, P., Özek, U., & Sapienza, P. (2019). Long-term orientation and educational performance. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 11(4), 272–309.
Fraser Institute (2020). Economic freedom of the world: 2020 annual report.
Frede, M. (2011). A Free will. University of California Press.
Fung, Y.-L. (1949). The philosophy at the basis of traditional Chinese society, Ideological differences and world order (pp. 18–34).
Galor, O. & Özak, Ö. (2015). Land productivity and economic development: Caloric suitability vs. agricultural suitability. Agricultural Suitability (July 12, 2015) .
Galor, O., Özak, Ö. & Sarid, A. (2017). Geographical origins and economic consequences of language structures. Available at SSRN 2820889.
Galor, O., & Özak, Ö. (2016). The agricultural origins of time preference. American Economic Review, 106(10), 3064–3103.
Gambetta, D. (1988). Trust: Making and breaking cooperative relations.
Gambetta, D. (1996). The Sicilian Mafia: The business of private protection. Harvard University Press.
Gellhorn, W. (1987). China’s quest for legal modernity. Journal Chinese Law, 1, 1.
Goldin, P. R. (2014). Confucianism. Routledge.
Goody, J., & Goody, J. R. (1983). The development of the family and marriage in Europe. Cambridge University Press.
Gorodnichenko, Y., & Roland, G. (2012). Understanding the individualism-collectivism cleavage and its effects: Lessons from cultural psychology, Institutions and comparative economic development (pp. 213–236). Springer.
Gorodnichenko, Y., & Roland, G. (2017). Culture, institutions, and the wealth of nations. Review of Economics and Statistics, 99(3), 402–416.
Gorodnichenko, Y., & Roland, G. (2021). Culture, institutions and democratization. Public Choice, 187(1), 165–195.
Greif, A. (1994). Cultural beliefs and the organization of society: A historical and theoretical reflection on collectivist and individualist societies. Journal of Political Economy, 102(5), 912–950.
Greif, A. (2005). Commitment, coercion, and markets: The nature and dynamics of institutions supporting exchange, handbook of new institutional economics (pp. 727–786). Springer.
Greif, A. (2006). Family structure, institutions, and growth: The origins and implications of western corporations. American Economic Review, 96(2), 308–312.
Greif, A. (2006). History lessons: The birth of impersonal exchange: The community responsibility system and impartial justice. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 20(2), 221–236.
Greif, A. (2006). Institutions and the path to the modern economy: Lessons from medieval trade. Cambridge University Press.
Greif, A., Milgrom, P., & Weingast, B. R. (1994). Coordination, commitment, and enforcement: The case of the merchant guild. Journal of Political Economy, 102(4), 745–776.
Greif, A., & Tabellini, G. (2017). The clan and the corporation: Sustaining cooperation in China and Europe. Journal of Comparative Economics, 45(1), 1–35.
Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2008). Trusting the stock market. The Journal of Finance, 63(6), 2557–2600.
Hamilton, G. G. (1996). The organizational foundations of Western and Chinese commerce: A historical and comparative analysis (pp. 43–60). De Gruyter Studies in Organization.
Heine, S. J. (2010). Cultural Psychology. Wiley.
Henderson, J. V., Squires, T., Storeygard, A., & Weil, D. (2018). The global distribution of economic activity: Nature, history, and the role of trade. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 133(1), 357–406.
Henrich, J. (2020). The WEIRDest people in the world: How the West became psychologically peculiar and particularly prosperous. Penguin.
Hofstede, G., Hofstede, G., & Minkov, M. (2010). Cultures and organizations: Software of the Mind (3rd ed.). McGraw-Hill Education. http://books.google.de/books?id=o4OqTgV3V00C
Hofstede, G. (2011). Dimensionalizing cultures: The Hofstede model in context. Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, 2(1), 2307–2919.
Iyigun, M., Rubin, J., & Seror, A. (2021). A theory of cultural revivals. European Economic Review, 135, 103734.
Johnson, D. (1977). The last years of a great clan: The li family of Chao Chün in late T’ang and early Sung. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 37, 5–102.
Kashima, Y., & Kashima, E. S. (2003). Individualism, gnp, climate, and pronoun drop: Is individualism determined by affluence and climate, or does language use play a role? Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 34(1), 125–134.
Keightley, D. N. (1990). Early civilization in China: Reflections on how it became Chinese, in Heritage of China: Contemporary perspectives on Chinese civilization (pp. 15–54).
Keightley, D. (1993). Clean hands and shining helmets: Heroic action in early Chinese and Greek culture. Religion and Authority, 43, 13-51.
Kelly, M. (2020). Understanding persistence.
King, A. Y. (2018). China’s great transformation: Selected essays on Confucianism, modernization, and democracy. The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press.
Kuhn, D. (2011). The age of Confucian rule: The Song transformation of China. Harvard University Press.
Kyriacou, A. P. (2016). Individualism-collectivism, governance and economic development. European Journal of Political Economy, 42, 91–104.
Liu, S.-h. (1998). Understanding Confucian philosophy: Classical and Sung-Ming.
Ma, D. (2007). Vlaw and economic growth: The case of traditional China & a review with some preliminary hypotheses, Technical report, V Working Paper. London School of Economics.
Maria, J. E. D. (2017). Shu and Zhong as the virtue of the golden rule: A Confucian contribution to contemporary virtue ethics. Asian Philosophy, 27(2), 100–111.
McCormick, C. T. & White, K. K. (2011). Folklore: An encyclopedia of beliefs, customs, tales, music, and art (vol. 1), ABC-CLIO.
Michalopoulos, S., & Xue, M. M. (2021). Folklore. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1, 54.
Morris, C. (1987). The discovery of the individual, 1050–1200 (Vol. 5). University of Toronto Press.
Natural Earth version 2.0.0 (2012). Retrieved from https://www.naturalearthdata.com
Niebuhr, R. (1996). The nature and destiny of man: A Christian interpretation: Volume one: Human nature; Volume two: Human destiny. Presbyterian Publishing Corp.
Nikolaev, B. & Salahodjaev, R. (2016). Are individualistic societies more democratic–evidence from a new instrument. Technical report, Working Paper.
Nikolaev, B., & Salahodjaev, R. (2017). Historical prevalence of infectious diseases, cultural values, and the origins of economic institutions. Kyklos, 70(1), 97–128.
North, D. C. (1990). Institutions, institutional change and economic performance. Journal of Womens Health.
Olsson, O., & Paik, C. (2016). Long-run cultural divergence: Evidence from the Neolithic revolution. Journal of Development Economics, 122, 197–213.
Persson, T., & Tabellini, G. (2021). Culture, institutions, and policy, The handbook of historical economics (pp. 463–489). Elsevier.
Pirenne, H. (2014). Medieval cities. Princeton University Press.
Putterman, L. (2007). State antiquity index, version 3. Brown University.
Putterman, L., & Weil, D. N. (2010). Post-1500 population flows and the long-run determinants of economic growth and inequality*. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 125(4), 1627–1682.
Richerson, P., & Boyd, R. (2005). Not by genes alone. how culture transformed human evolution. University of Chicago Press.
Rodrik, D., Subramanian, A., & Trebbi, F. (2004). Institutions rule: The primacy of institutions over geography and integration in economic development. Journal of Economic Growth, 9(2), 131–165.
Roebuck, C. & Finley, M. (1964). The ancient greeks. an introduction to their life and thought, American Journal of Philology, 85(4).
Roland, G. (2020). The deep historical roots of modern culture: A comparative perspective. Journal of Comparative Economics, 48(3), 483–508.
Rüpke, J. (2011). A companion to Roman religion (Vol. 78). Wiley.
Schulz, J. F., Bahrami-Rad, D., Beauchamp, J. P., & Henrich, J. (2019). The church, intensive kinship, and global psychological variation. Science, 366(6466), eaau5241.
Spiro, D. (2020). Multigenerational transmission of culture. Journal of Economic Theory, 188, 105037.
Tabellini, G. (2008). The scope of cooperation: Values and incentives. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 123(3), 905–950.
Talhelm, T., Zhang, X., Oishi, S., Shimin, C., Duan, D., Lan, X., & Kitayama, S. (2014). Large-scale psychological differences within china explained by rice versus wheat agriculture. Science, 344(6184), 603–608.
Tanzi, V. (1994). Corruption, governmental activities, and markets.
Tilly, C. (1989). Cities and states in Europe, 1000–1800. Theory and society (pp. 563–584).
Triandis, H. C. (2018). Individualism and collectivism. Routledge.
Vollrath, D. (2011). The agricultural basis of comparative development. Journal of Economic Growth, 16(4), 343–370.
Watson, J. L. (1982). Chinese kinship reconsidered: Anthropological perspectives on historical research, China Q (p. 589).
Witte, J., Jr. (2015). The Western case for monogamy over polygamy. Cambridge University Press.
Yang, C.-k. et al. (1966). Chinese communist society: The family and the village. Chinese communist society: The family and the village.
Zelin, M. (2004). Contract and property in early modern China: Rational choice in political science. Stanford University Press.
Funding
We wish to thank the editor, Oded Galor, three anonymous referees, Anne Hanley, Joel Mokyr, Ömer Özak, Fabrizio Panebianco, David Weil, Ran Weksler, and seminar and conference participants at Brown University, Northwestern University, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, the annual conference of the Israel Economics Association, CEF, PEDD, ASREC, PET, CES, and EPCS for helpful suggestions and comments. Yosef Mentzer and Omer Shiran provided excellent research assistance. This work was supported by the Handelsbankens Research Foundation (Grant Number P18-0142).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary Information
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Eruchimovitch, I., Michaeli, M. & Sarid, A. On the coevolution of individualism and institutions. J Econ Growth (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10887-023-09238-4
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10887-023-09238-4