On the probabilistic transmission of continuous cultural traits

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Cheung, Man-Wah; Wu, Jiabin
• 署名单位: Shanghai University of Finance & Economics; University of Oregon
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2018.01.002
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 300-323
• 关键词: cultural transmission; Continuous trait space; Cultural evolution; Imitative dynamic; polarization

摘要

This paper proposes a framework that generalizes the discrete cultural transmission model of Bisin and Verdier (2001) to a continuous trait setting. We find that the resulting cultural evolutionary dynamic can be characterized as a continuous imitative dynamic in a population game. By using the properties of imitative dynamics, we show that as in Bisin and Verdier, cultural substitutability is the key that leads to cultural heterogeneity. Furthermore, we model an agent's cultural intolerance towards another agent as an increasing function of their cultural distance. We find that the curvature of the cultural intolerance function plays an important role in determining the long-run cultural phenomena. In particular, when the cultural intolerance function is convex, only the most extremely polarized state is a stable limit point. (C) 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.