On the Dynamics of Human Behavior: The Past, Present, and Future of Culture, Conflict, and Cooperation Nathan Nunn Abstract I provide a theoretically-guided discussion of the dynamics of human behavior, focusing on the importance of culture (socially-learned information) and tradition (transmission of culture across generations). Decision-making that relies on tradition can be an effective […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 575, March 2020
Understanding Cultural Persistence and Change Paola Giuliano, Nathan Nunn Abstract We examine a determinant of cultural persistence that has emerged from a class of models in evolutionary anthropology: the similarity of the environment across generations. Within these models, when the environment is more similar across generations, the traits that have evolved up to the previous […]