Emeline Bezin
(IRES, UCLouvain and PSE)
will give a presentation on
An Economic Theory of Ethical Consumer Culture and Directed Technological Change
Abstract:
Sustainable innovation appears as a strongly path dependent phenomenon. This paper argues that this feature arises through the co-evolution between culture and technology. It develops a theory of the formation of “ethical consumer culture” with directed technological change. Ethical preferences are formed through cultural transmission involving rational social-
ization actions as in Bisin and Verdier (2001). Transmission is affected by the technology. The direction of technological change depends on culture through market size effects. The dynamics generally exhibits complementarities giving rise to multiple equilibria. The theory accounts for the cross-country correlation between ethical consumption attitudes and the development of sustainable technologies.