In this book, based on 1995 Ohlin Lectures, Deepak Lal provides an accessible, interdisciplinary account of role of culture in shaping economic performance. Topics addressed include a possible future clash of civilizations, role of Asian values in East Asian economic miracle, cultural versus economic causes of social decay in West, and whether modernization leads to Westernization. Lal makes an important distinction between material and cosmological beliefs, showing how both were initially shaped by factor endowments and how they have evolved in response to changing historical pressures in different civilizations.Lal's first major theme is interaction of factor endowments, culture, and politics in explaining modern intensive growth in West. The other major theme is role of individualism--an inadvertent legacy of medieval Catholic Church--in promoting this growth, and strange metamorphoses this has caused in both West's cosmological beliefs and interaction between the West and rest. Lal takes account of relevant literature in history, anthropology, social psychology, evolutionary biology, neurology, and sociology, and economic history of regions and cultures that form Eurasia. An appendix shows how stories Lal tells can be described by four formal economic models.
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A 1999 study studied this question.