Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T19:07:19.242Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Is it Kosher to Talk about Culture?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Peter Temin
Peter Temin
Affiliation:
Professor, Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 02139.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This address considers the role of culture in economic history. It argues that AngloSaxon culture was an important factor determining where and when industrialization began and spread. The contrast between Anglo-Saxon individualism and Japan’s more collective culture also is important in understanding the differences between Japanese and American industrial practices today. I predict that Japan’s collective culture may give it an economic edge in the coming years despite its current difficulties. And I advocate greater attention to culture by both economists and historians in the practice of economic history.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 57 , Issue 2 , June 1997 , pp. 267 - 287
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Abe, Etsuo, and Robert, Fitzgerald. “Japanese Economic Success: Timing, Culture, and Organisational Capability.” Business History 37, no. 2 (1995): 1–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abramovitz, Moses. “Catching Up, Forging Ahead, Falling Behind.” this JOURNAL 46, no. 2 (1986): 385–406.Google Scholar
Aoki, Masahiko. Information, Incentives, and Bargaining in the Japanese Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Ashton, T. S., The Industrial Revolution. London: Oxford University Press, 1948.Google Scholar
Bailyn, Bernard. The Peopling of British North America New York: Knopf, 1986.Google Scholar
Becker, Gary. An Economic Approach to Human Behavior. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bisin, Alberto, and Thierry, Verdie. “The Economics of Culture Transmission and the Dynamics of Preferences.” unpublished manuscript, MIT, 1996.Google Scholar
Chandler, Alfred D. JrScale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Clark, Gregory. “The Political Foundations of Modern Economic Growth: England, 1540–1800. ” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 26, no. 4 (1996): 563–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coase, Ronald H. “The Nature of the Firm” Economica 4, new series no. 16 (1937): 386–405.Google Scholar
Coase, Ronald. The Nature of the film. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Coase, Robert E.Stategies for Learning: Small-Group Activities in American, Japanese, and Swedish Industry. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Cusumano, Michael A., and Selby, Richard W.Microsoft Secrets: How the World’s Most Powerful Software Company Creates Technology, Shapes Markets, and Manages People. New York: The Free Press, 1995.Google Scholar
David, Paul A., et al. Reckoning with Slavery. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.Google Scholar
De, Long J. Bradford. “Productivity Growth, Convergence, and Welfare: Comment” American Economic Review 78 (1988), no. 5: 1138–54.Google Scholar
Diamond, Sigmund. “Values as an Obstacle to Economic Growth: The American Colonies.” this JOURNAL 27, no. 4 (1967): 561–75.Google Scholar
Dodd, George, Days at the Factories. 1843. Reprint. New York: Augustus Kelley, 1967.Google Scholar
Dore, Ronald. British Factory—Japanese Factory: The Origins of National Diversity in Industrial Relations. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973.Google Scholar
Dore, Ronald. Flexible Rigidities: Structural Adjustment in Japan, 1970–82. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Dore, Ronald. Taking Japan Seriously: A Confucian Perspective on Leading Economic Issues. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Dow, Gregory K. “Why Capital Hires Labor: A Bargaining Perspective.” American Economic Review 83, no. 1 (1993): 118–34.Google Scholar
Dower, John. “The Useful War.” Daedalus 119, no. 3 (1990): 49–70.Google Scholar
Dower, John. “Sizing Up (and Breaking Down) Japan.” Iwananmi Koza: Tsushi. forthcoming.Google Scholar
Fischer, David Hackett. Paul Revere’s Ride. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Mark, Fruin W.. The Japanese Enterprise System: Competitive Strategies and Cooperative Structures. Oxford: Oxford Univeristy Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Fuchs, Victor. The Service Economy. New York: Columbia University Press, 1968.Google Scholar
Gerlach, Michael L.Alliance Capitalism: The Social Organization of Japanese Business. New York: University of California Press, 1992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gjerde, Jon, and Anne, McCants. “Fertility, Marriage, and Culture: Demographic Processes Among Norwegian Immigrants to the Rural Middle West.” this JOURNAL 55, no. 4 (1995): 860–88.Google Scholar
Granovetter, M. “Economic Action and Social Structure: the Problem of Embeddedness.” American Journal of Sociology 91, no. 3 (1985): 481–510.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greif, Avner. “Culture Beliefs and the Organization of Society: A History and Theoretical Reflection on Collectivist and Individualist Societies.” Journal of Political Economy 102, no. 5 (1994): 912–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hartz, Louis. Economic Policy and Democratic Thought: Pennsylvanis, 1776–1860. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1948.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoshi, Takeo. “The Economic Role of Corporate Grouping and the Main Bank System.” In The Japanese Firm: The Sources of Competitive Strength, edited by Aoki, Masahiko and Dore, Ronald, 285–309. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Chalmers. MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925–75. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Chalmers. Japan: Who Governs? The Rise of the Developmental State. New York: W. W. Norton, 1995.Google Scholar
Landes, David S.Prometheus Unbound: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969.Google Scholar
Milgrom, Paul, and John, Roberts. “The Economics of Modern Manufacturing: Technology, Strategy, and Organization.” American Economic Review, 80, no. 3 (1990): 511–28.Google Scholar
Milgrom, Paul, and John, Roverts, “Complementarities and Fit: Strategy, Structure and Organizational Change in Manufacturing.” Journal of Accounting and Economics 19, nos. 2 and 3 (1995): 179–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, William. “American Historians and the Business Elite.” this JOURNAL 9, no. 2 (06 1949): 184–208.Google Scholar
Mokyr, Joel. “Editor’s Introduction: The New Economic History and the Industrial Revolution.” In The British Industrial Revolution: An Economic Perspective, edited by Mokyr, Joel, 1–31. Boulder, Co: Westview Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Negroponte, Nicholas. Being Digital. New York: Knopf, 1995.Google Scholar
Nelson, Richard R. and Winter, Sidney G.. An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change Harvard University Press, 1982.Google Scholar
North, Douglass C., and Weingast, Barry R.. “Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England.” this JOURNAL 49, no. 4 (1989): 803–32.Google Scholar
Potter, David M.People of Plenty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954.Google Scholar
Putnam, Robert D.Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Sako, Mari. “Training, Productivity, and Quality Control in Japanese Multinational Companies.” In Japanese Firm: The Sources of Competitve Strength, edited by Aoki, Masahiko and Dore, Ronald, 84–116. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sheard, Paul “Interlocking Shareholding and Corporate Governance in Japan.” In The Japanese Firm: The Sources of Competitive Stength, edited by Aoki, Masahiko and Dore, Ronald, 84–116. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Smiles, SamuelLives of the Engineers., London: J. Murray, 1861–1862.Google Scholar
Solberg, Carl E. “Land Tenure and Land Settlement: Policy and Patterns in the Canadian Prairies and the Argentine Pampas, 1880–1930.” In Argentina, Australia and Canada, edited by Platt, D.C.M and Guido, di Tella, 53–75. London: Macmillan, 1985.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sugawara, Sandra. “Japan Inc. Finds a Way to Keep the Lid on Layoffs.” The Washington Post. 03 28, 1996, p. D9.Google Scholar
Teece, David J., Richard, Rumelt, Giovanni, Dosi, and Sidney, Winter. “Understanding Corporate Coherence: Theory and Evidence.” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 23, no. 1 (1994): 1–30.Google Scholar
Peter, Temin. “Free Land and Federalism: A Synoptic View of American Economic History.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 21, no. 3 (1977): 371–89.Google Scholar
Peter, Temin. “Enterpreneurs and Managers.” In Favorites of Fortune: Technology, Growth and Economic Development Since the Industiral Revolution, edited by Higonnet, Patrice, Land, David S., and Henry, Rosovsky, 339–55. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Peter, Temin. “Two Views of the British Industrial Revolution,” this JOURNAL 57, no. 1 (1997): 63–82.Google Scholar
Tevin, Stacey. “CEO Incentive Contracts, Monitoring Costs, and Corporate Performance.” New England Economic Review. (01/02, 1996): 39–50.Google Scholar
Toniolo, Gianni. An Economic History of Liberal Italy, 1850–1918. London: Routledge, 1990.Google Scholar
Trudeau, Gary. “Doonesbury.” The Boston Global. 03 21, 1996.Google Scholar
Veblen, Thorstein. The Theory of Business Enterprise. London: Routledge/Thoemmes Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Scribner’s, 1958.Google Scholar
Williamson, Oliver E.The Economic Institutions of Capitalism: Firms, Markets, Relational Contracting. New York: Free Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Wright, Gavin. “The Origins of American Industrial Success, 1879–1940.” American Economic Review 80, no. 4 (1990): 651–68.Google Scholar
Womack, James P., Jones, Daniel T., and Daniel, Roos. The Machine that Changed the World. New York: Rawson Associates, 1990.Google Scholar
Zamagni, Vera. The Economic History of Italy, 1860–1990. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993.CrossRefGoogle Scholar