Final Report Summary - TECTACOM (The Economics of Cultural Transmission and Applications to Communities,Organizations and Markets)
The project highlights within a new conceptual framework the importance of the co-evolution of institutions and culture to understand some long term historical dynamics in the context of long run economic development outcomes. As well, the project indicates how the interaction between different drivers of change, some of which involving centralized processes of decision making and others involving decentralized and uncoordinated evolutionary changes, may create policy-induced threshold effects on cultural evolution and socio-economic assimilation of minority or disadvantaged groups. Applied to the issue of nation-state building and the polarization or convergence of social identities, and to the question of the control of social pathological behaviors such as crime and delinquency, these effects help understand why public policies may backfire compared to their intended purpose.