How does culture impact economic life? Is culture like a ball and chain that actors must lug around as they pursue their material interests? Or, is culture like a tool-kit from which entrepreneurs can draw resources to aid them in their efforts? Or, is being immersed in a culture like wearing a...

1. Introduction -- 2. Economists should study culture -- 3. But economists often misunderstand the relationship between culture and markets -- 4. Economists ought to be looking at the spirits that animate markets -- 5. This does not mean that economists have to abandon economics.

Culture shapes economic action and, as such, impacts economic life. Although there is a growing recognition amongst economists that culture matters, there is nothing approaching a universal agreement on how to incorporate culture into economic analysis. We provide a brief summary of how...

The dominant model of exchange between economists and our cousins in the other social sciences is export. We seldom learn or even try to learn from our compatriots. We peddle our analysis (of everything from the virtuous to the profane), our methods (too often borrowed from the natural sciences)...

Culture has been a relatively understudied subject within economics. Economists who have studied it often conceive culture as a form of capital, treating it as a set of tools or a resource that certain groups possess and other groups do not. Austrian economics, in contrast, is a science of human...