ABSTRACT
The potential role of values and norms and, more generally, of cultural factors as causal variables affecting the path and pattern of economic growth and development has become subject to considerable debate in academic circles and among public policy experts. Economic theory, however, especially the dominant neoclassical variant, does not well incorporate cultural factors as independent and causally substantive variables with respect to economic growth and development. Rather, strictly economic variables such as capital stock, technological change, and human capital are touted as being the major explanatory variables affecting growth and development irrespective of cultural setting. Articulating the cultural setting of an economy and, more specifically, of economic agents, is assumed not to add substantively to either the predictive or explanatory power of economic theory. For this reason, the conventional economic wisdom pays little heed to cultural factors in developing explanations of economic problems (Jones 2006).
