ABSTRACT
An important dimension of any effective national economic policy has to be the consideration of how the prevailing culture influences the national economic goals and what, if any, cultural changes need to be encouraged. This chapter highlights a few examples how certain salient features of particular national cultures affect their economies. The Great Britain exemplifies how the impact of a particular cultural characteristic can at one time be favorable to economic growth and later in changed circumstances retard it. The class system largely explains why Britain failed during the nineteenth and early twentieth century to improve the nature and level of education to match that of its emerging economic competitors. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the two dominant German governing parties, the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats, share a strong consensus on how the economy should operate. The 1989-90 bilateral trade talks provided a vivid example of the contrast between Japanese and American culture.
