We provide a cultural explanation to the phenomenon of corruption in the framework of an overlapping generations model with intergenerational transmission of values. We show that the economy has two steady states with di erent levels of corruption. The driving force in the equilibrium selection process is the education e ort exerted by parents which depends on the distribution of ethics in the ...

In a narrow critique of two early papers in the literature on cumulative cultural evolution, Vaesen et al. (1) misunderstand the work they criticize, mischaracterize multiple lines of research, and selectively ignore much evidence. While largely recycling prior criticisms, they provide no new models, evidence, or explanations (2). Not only do their criticisms of Henrich’s (3) and Powell et al.’...

The evolution and maintenance of social learning, in competition with individual learning, under fluctuating selection have been well-studied in the theory of cultural evolution. Here, we study competition between vertical and oblique cultural transmission of a dichotomous phenotype under constant, periodically cycling, and randomly fluctuating selection. Conditions are derived for the existenc...

We generalize the Bisin and Verdier (2000, 2001) model of intergenerational transmission to permit an arbitrary number of cultural traits. A key observation – that this model is equivalent to an evolutionary game under replicator dynamics – allows us to exploit the extensive literature on replicator systems. For some substantively interesting special cases, we demonstrate global stability of eq...

What do you do to start reading cultural transmission and evolution a quantitative approach? Searching the book that you love to read first or find an interesting book that will make you want to read? Everybody has difference with their reason of reading a book. Actuary, reading habit must be from earlier. Many people may be love to read, but not a book. It's not fault. Someone will be bored to...

The application of phylogenetic methods to cultural variation raises questions about how cultural adaption works and how it is coupled to cultural transmission. Cultural group selection is of particular interest in this context because it depends on the same kinds of mechanisms that lead to tree-like patterns of cultural variation. Here, we review ideas about cultural group selection relevant t...

This paper presents a survey of the theoretical and empirical literature on cultural transmission and socialization. It has been prepared for the Handbook of Social Economics, edited by Jess Benhabib, Alberto Bisin, and Matt Jackson, to be published by Elsevier Science in 2010. We have collaborated on the study of cultural transmission for more than a decade, while socializing our own children....

Long-term field studies have revealed considerable behavioural differences among groups of wild Pan troglodytes. Here, we report three sets of cladistic analyses that were designed to shed light on issues relating to this interpopulation variation that are of particular relevance to palaeoanthropology. In the first set of analyses, we focused on the proximate cause of the variation. Some resear...

The symposium papers at hand apply a population-biological modeling approach to the problems of cultural transmission and cultural evolution. The papers by Boyd and Richerson, by Chen et al., and by Pulliam are conceptually very similar, each advancing a variant on the additive transmission model of Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman (1981), in which the probability that pseudoparticulate "traits" [ess...