Cultural leader and the dynamics of assimilation
Journal article: This paper studies the population dynamics of cultural traits in a model of intergenerational cultural transmission with a perfectly-forward looking cultural leader. We show that there exists a threshold size in terms of population above which the cultural leader becomes active. We also show that a policy affecting some key parameters (such as the cost of providing the religious good) has a different impact in the short run and in the long run due to over-reactions or under-reactions of the different cultural groups. Finally, we study the cultural competition between two forward-looking cultural leaders with opposite objectives. We show that the steady-state cultural equilibrium depends on the time preference structure of the two leaders.
Author(s)
Thierry Verdier, Yves Zénou
Journal
- Journal of Economic Theory
Date of publication
- 2018
Keywords
- Cultural substituability
- Integration
- Forward-looking leader
Pages
- 374 – 414
URL of the HAL notice
Version
- 1
Volume
- 175