Curriculum Culture, Trust & the Economy
Culture, Trust & the Economy
How trust, social norms, networks, religion, festivals, language and honesty shape economic life - with experiments that reveal how people really behave.
- Trust and Prosperity Why societies where people trust each other tend to be richer, how economists measure trust, and why it matters for markets. 📄 Read-aloud
- Does Culture Affect Economic Growth? The long debate over whether cultural values explain why some societies grew richer, from Max Weber's Protestant ethic to modern evidence. 📄 Read-aloud
- Social Capital How networks, relationships and community ties act as a form of capital that helps people and communities get things done. 📄 Read-aloud
- How Social Norms Shape Economic Choices How unwritten rules about what others do and expect influence decisions about work, saving and spending, and how correcting misperceptions can change behaviour. 📄 Read-aloud
- Religion and the Economy How religious beliefs, institutions and practices influence economic life, from finance rules to charitable giving and pilgrimage economies. 📄 Read-aloud
- The Economics of Festivals How festivals like Diwali and the Kumbh Mela create huge bursts of spending and activity, and their economic benefits and costs. 📄 Read-aloud
- Culture, Trust & the Economy: Checkpoint 1 Quick checkpoint - five questions on trust, culture, social capital, norms and religion. 5 questions
- Community Networks in Business How trading communities and kinship networks help members get credit, jobs and business contacts, and the downsides of network-based economies. 📄 Read-aloud
- Language and Economic Life How the languages people speak affect their jobs and earnings, the value of English in India, and the economics of multilingual societies. 📄 Read-aloud
- Cooperation, Reciprocity and Public Goods Games What experiments reveal about when people cooperate for the common good, and how punishment and reciprocity sustain cooperation. 📄 Read-aloud
- Why Corruption Persists: Norms and Expectations How expectations about what others do can keep corruption entrenched, what a famous study of diplomats' parking tickets revealed, and how norms can shift. 📄 Read-aloud
- Honesty: The Lost Wallet Experiment What a huge experiment across 40 countries revealed about honesty, including the surprising finding that people return wallets more often when they contain more money. 📄 Read-aloud
- The Economics of Gift Giving Whether gifts destroy value, as one famous economics paper argued, or create value through relationships and signalling. 📄 Read-aloud