The Economics of Business Culture by Mark Casson

The Economics of Business Culture by Mark Casson

This book is an analysis of the economic effects of culture. It demonstrates how these effects can be analysed in a rigorous fashion. The cultural environment influences decision-making through both moral values and fundamental beliefs. These values are developed principally within religious, ethnic, and national groupings and seem to exert a major influence on the economic performance of these groups. The economic analysis of culture should therefore be able to shed light on a wide variety of contemporary social and business problems. The author argues that the gains from technology in modern societies can be offset by high costs if the moral dimension is missing. Overall economic performance depends on transaction costs, and these mainly reflect the level of trust in the economy. The level of trust depends in turn on culture. An effective culture has a strong moral content. Morality can overcome problems that formal procedures - based on monitoring compicance with contracts - cannot. A strong culture therefore reduces transaction costs and enhances performance - the success of an economy depends on the quality of its culture.

I was glad to come across a book which moves away from inconclusive numerical comparisons and sheds some light on why even someone who welcomed the 1980s emphasis on competition and deregulation should still feel uneasy about some of the cultural aspects of the Thatcher revolution, including those that live on under the Major governmentSamuel Brittan, Financial Times

Mark Casson is Professor of Economics at the University of Reading. His publications include The Entrepreneur (1982; new edition, 2002), Entrepreneurship and Business Culture (1995) and Enterprise and Leadership (2000). He has contributed articles on entrepreneurship to the New Palgrave Dictionary
of Economics, the International Encyclopaedia of Social Science, the Fortune Dictionary of Economics and the Oxford Encyclopaedia of Economic History. His most recent work focuses on links between entrepreneurship and theories of the firm. Bernard Yeung is Abraham Krasnoff Professor of Global
Business, Economics and Strategy, Stern School of Business, New York University. He was Vice-President of the Academy of International Business, 2000-2002. He has published widely at the interface of economics, finance and strategy, with special reference to SME performance, family business,
corporate finance, capital market functionality, and foreign direct investment. He edited Small and Medium Sized Enterprises in the Global Economy (1999) with Zoltan Acs. Anuradha Basu is Professor of Entrepreneurship and Director, Silicon Valley Center for Entrepreneurship, Lucas Graduate School of
Business, San Jose State University, California, and formerly Visiting Scholar, Center for Research on Economic Development and Policy Reform, Stanford University (2002-3). She has published widely on Asian business, and on ethnic minority businesses in the UK. She was a member of the Foreign &
Commonwealth Office UK India Consultative Group (2001-2). Nigel Wadeson is lecturer in Economics at the University of Reading. He has published on decision making, the firm, and entrepreneurship in a range of books and journals. He teaches entrepreneurship and small business economics at masters
level. He spent several years working in entrepreneurial ventures in the IT industry and has also acted as a consultant involved in high-level government policy work.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780198288886
ISBN 10	0198288883
Title	The Economics of Business Culture
Author	Mark Casson
Series	Clarendon Paperbacks
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Oxford University Press
Year published	1994-06-01
Number of pages	298
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.