Incompatible European Partners? Cultural Predispositions and Household Financial Behavior

Michael Haliassos, Yigitcan Karabulut and Thomas Jansson

No 10039, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: The Eurozone fiscal crisis has created pressure for institutional harmonization, but skeptics argue that cultural predispositions can prevent convergence in behavior. Our paper derives a robust cultural classification of European countries and utilizes unique data on natives and immigrants. Classification based on genetic distance or on Hofstede?s cultural dimensions fails to identify a single ?southern? culture but points to a ?northern? culture. Our findings support the relevance of cultural predispositions for financial behavior; and convergence of behavior over time in the face of common institutions, even for countries with great cultural distance from the country that created those institutions.

Keywords: Culture; Household portfolios; Household finance; Institutions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E21 G11 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-06
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP10039 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: Incompatible European Partners? Cultural Predispositions and Household Financial Behavior (2017)
Working Paper: Incompatible European Partners? Cultural Predispositions and Household Financial Behavior (2015)
Working Paper: Incompatible European partners? Cultural predispositions and household financial behavior (2015)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:10039

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP10039

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().