摘要：This research argues that variations in the interplay between cultural assimilation and cultural
diffusion have played a significant role in giving rise to differential patterns of economic
development across the globe. Societies that were geographically less vulnerable to cultural
diffusion, benefited from enhanced assimilation, lower cultural diversity and, thus, more intense
accumulation of society-specific human capital, enabling them to flourish in the technological
paradigm that characterized the agricultural stage of development. The lack of cultural diffusion
and its manifestation in cultural rigidity, however, diminished the ability of these societies to
adapt to a new technological paradigm, which delayed their industrialization and, thereby, their
take-off to a state of sustained economic growth. The theory contributes to the understanding
of the advent of divergence and overtaking in the process of long-run development, attributing
the dominance of some societies within a given technological regime to a superior operation of
cultural assimilation, while the success of others in the switch between technological regimes to
a higher frequency of cultural diffusion and the beneficial effect of diversity on the adaptability
of society to a changing technological environment. Thus, in contrast to the cultural and institutional
hypotheses, which posit a hierarchy of cultural and institutional attributes in terms of
their conduciveness to innovation and their ability in fostering industrialization, the proposed
theory suggests that the desirable degree of the relative prevalence of cultural assimilation versus
cultural diffusion varies according to the stage of development. Enhanced cultural assimilation
is optimal within a given stage of development, but is detrimental for the transition between
technological regimes. Therefore, while cultural traits themselves do not necessarily have a differential
effect on the process of development, it is the variation in the relative strengths of the
forces of cultural assimilation and cultural diffusion, which together determine the heterogeneity
of these traits, that is instrumental for comparative economic development.
