UNCERTAINTY AVOIDANCE

Uncertainty avoidance

Abstract

Although much has been written about the impact of culture on economic development, the statistical association between the economy (measured by the "effective allocation of resources" and "wealth distribution") and the dimensions of national culture (individualism, power distance, lack of uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, and long-term orientation) remain insufficiently studied. In this study, we test the proposition that national cultural differences will explain and predict variations of the same "effective allocation of resources" and "wealth distribution" between nations. The empirical results provide strong evidence to support the explanation postulated effects of the three dimensions of national culture (individualism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance), but not to provide such proof for the other two (masculinity and long term Guidance). In addition, five national cultural dimensions explain 68.9% of the difference in "wealth distribution" and up 87.9% of the difference in "efficiency of resource allocation" of sample countries.

Keywords: economic development, efficiency of resource allocation, distribution of national wealth of culture

Uncertainty avoidance

1. INTRODUCTION

Western Europe and Japan are already challenges in their successful economic development and competitiveness in the economic miracle that followed the policies and programs designed after the Second World War. However, massive inspiration financial policies and programs of similar programs in half a century remained no more successful for countries Africa, Latin America and some Asian countries. In fact, the economic interference in the poorest countries, especially the so-called "structural adjustment programs", have instead led to a debt historically unprecedented for these countries.

Although several theories have been advanced to explain the economic divergence between developing countries, these theories have not been able to provide adequate forecasts of economic diversity in developing countries. As Patterson (2006, 13) indicated, "the main cause of this lack is a deep-seated dogma that has prevailed in social science and policy circles since the mid-1960s: the rejection of any explanation that invokes the cultural characteristics of a group. "According to other authors, culture has received only limited attention, not because of a lack of relevance for the development of economic analysis, but because of the difficulty of dealing with construction (Papamarcos and Watson, 2006, 48). In this study, we test the changes in the economic development of countries using Hofstede's national culture dimensions as independent variables.

2. Theoretical background

In this section, we briefly review the one hand the literature on economic development and other national literary culture.

2.1. The literature on economic development

The concept of "economic development" can be defined as the process of improving the quality of human life in terms of economic growth (increasing production), standard of living (income, consumption, health, sanitation, education , housing, etc. ..), people are self-actualization (through social, political and economic factors that promote human dignity and respect), and freedom of choice of citizens. Existing economic development can be broadly two types of groups: economic convergence in the development of theories and theories that promote economic development. The views converged, particularly important in the years 1950 and 1960, including the stage of development of economic ...