期刊名称：Discussion Paper / Département des Sciences Économiques de l'Université Catholique de Louvain
印刷版ISSN：1379-244X
出版年度：2009
卷号：1
出版社：Université catholique de Louvain
摘要：We develop a dynamic framework of ideological evolution in a two-trait population of
perfect foresight individuals. We model how children are educated to a speci¯c ideo-
logical trait, liberal or traditional, which later in life will in°uence the level of economic
activity and therefore the well-being of the family. Our aim is to study the dynamics
of ideological traits when an exchange matching process takes place. We show that
the ideological distance between groups, namely taste for similarity within the fam-
ily, determines the long-run distribution of traits as well as the intertemporal parents'
behaviour in the intergenerational transmission process. With respect to the existing
works on cultural transmission, the singularity of our model appears through the sit-
uation in which parents' paternalism in children education is a necessary but not a
su±cient condition to guarantee diversity or preservation of heterogeneity in the long
run distribution of traits. In particular, when the taste for similarity within the family
is su±ciently low, the intertemporal evolution of traits modi¯es the trade-o® between
preservation of ideological beliefs and exchange level in the matching process. Hence,
when the opportunity cost to have children of the same type is high, altruistic parents
do not promote their variant even though their are biased towards their own ideological
beliefs. Assuming myopic agents does not change the qualitative results of the model.
关键词：Ideological Transmission, Taste for Similarity, Paternalism, Diversity.
