Template-Type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0

Author-Name: Sebastiano Della Lena
Author-X-Name-First: Sebastiano
Author-X-Name-Last: Della Lena

Author-Name: Fabrizio Panebianco
Author-X-Name-First: Fabrizio
Author-X-Name-Last: Panebianco
Author-Email: fabrizio.panebianco@unicatt.it
Author-Workplace-Name: Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
Author-Workplace-Name: Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore



Title: Cultural Transmission with Incomplete Information: Parental Perceived Efficacy and Group Misrepresentation.


Abstract: This paper introduces incomplete information in the standard model of cultural transmission
(Bisin and Verdier, 2001). We allow parents to ignore own group size and the
efficiency of their cultural transmission technology, while receiving a feedback from their
children. Using the selfcon_rming equilibrium concept, parents may end up to sustain,
and be confirmed about, wrong conjectures. We show that in equilibrium optimal socialization
efforts display cultural complementarity with respect to own population share,
while the standard substitution result holds with respect their own conjectured population
shares. Considering the population dynamics, if conjectures about population shares
are shaped by cultural leaders who want to maximize the presence of own traits in the
next period, then conjectures are characterized by negative biases. Our main finding is
that, depending on the magnitude of the bias, the dynamics can display stable or unstable
polymorphic equilibria, or just a stable homomorphic equilibrium, potentially reverting
standard predictions

Length: 35
Creation-Date: 2019-03
File-URL: http://dipartimenti.unicatt.it/economia-finanza-def079.pdf
File-Format: Application/pdf
File-Function: First version, 2019
Number: def079
Classification-JEL: C72, D10, D80, J10, Z10. 
Keywords: Cultural Transmission; Incomplete Information; Selfconrming Equilibrium;
Group Under-Representation; Parental Perceived Ecacy; Cultural leaders.
Handle: RePEc:ctc:serie1:def079