Endogenous Indoctrination: Occupational Choices, the Evolution of Beliefs and the Political Economy of Reforms

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Saint-Paul, Gilles
• 署名单位: Universite de Toulouse; Universite Toulouse 1 Capitole; Toulouse School of Economics
• 刊物名称: ECONOMIC JOURNAL
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0013-0133
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0297.2010.02358.x
• 发表日期: 2010
• 页码: 325-353
• 关键词: social-mobility; redistribution

摘要

I analyse a model where workers self-select in the educational occupation in a way which is correlated with their beliefs about the working of the market economy. Teachers have a disproportionate effect on the transmission of beliefs. Therefore, they generate a bias which makes it harder for the population to learn the true parameters of the economy if these are favourable to the market economy. Two parameters determine this bias. Social entropy defines how predictable one's occupation is as a function of one's beliefs. Heritability is the weight of the family's beliefs in the determination of the priors of a new generation. Both heritability and social entropy reduce the bias and make it easier to learn that the market economy is good, under the assumption that it is.