The role of culture in education and innovation : an economic perspective on the cultural toolkit

Kurzfassung/Abstract

In this dissertation, I investigate how innate decision-making tools, such as culture and curiosity, affect individual economic education and innovation decisions. The cumulative dissertation consists of the following four chapters:
Chapter 1: Culture in Individual Economic Decision-Making—A Conceptual Contribution
Chapter 2: Individualism and the Formation of Human Capital (based on joint work with Sven Resnjanskij, Jens Ruhose, and Simon Wiederhold)
Chapter 3: Individualism, Creativity, and Innovation
Chapter 4: Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes? Casino-Based Evidence on Exploration Strategies and Curiosity in a High-Complexity Game (based on joint work with Alexander Patt)
Through a combination of methods (theoretical as well as structural and reduced-form empirical work) and data sources (ranging from large-scale international data to experimentally generated data), each chapter answers a distinct but related research question:
While the first chapter contributes to our conceptual understanding of culture in an economic context, chapters two and three are dedicated to investigating economic effects of individualism. Individualism is a polarizing dimension of culture with its emphasis on personal achievement and personal responsibility. Although individualism is an established driver of long-run economic growth, the underlying individual-level mechanisms have not been well understood. To close this research gap, I study the role of individualism in individual education and innovation decisions. Using data from an international skill assessment, the second chapter shows that individualism strongly and positively affects human capital investments. Individualism matters more for human capital formation than any other dimension of culture found in the economic literature and should, thus, be included more rigorously in the education production function. Complementarily, the third chapter reveals that individualism is positively related to individual innovativeness – which is captured by a wide range of measures from selection into creative-innovative occupations and knowledge diffusion on the job to creativity traits and patenting.
Focusing on the exploration-exploitation trade-off that is prevalent in innovation decisions, the fourth chapter uses slot machine games to investigate exploration behavior in a natural yet controlled setting. The experimental results document that a significant group of players engage in curiosity-based exploration related to the game’s entropy. The different player types identified in the data showcase the variety of strategies economic agents use to navigate a high-uncertainty high-complexity decision environment.
To embrace diversity in thoughts and approaches economically, an understanding of the specific role of cultural tools in economic decision making is imperative.