Culture‐based development: empirical evidence for Germany

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive concept for the role of culture in economic growth.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper overviews the culture based development (CBD) concept and its precise definition of culture as an encompassing socio‐economic factor. The outlined CBD mechanism of impact is expressed in a testable empirical model. Alternative approaches for operationalizing the CBD definition of cultural capital are suggested and a real data application on intra‐regional level (for German Kreise) is presented.

Findings

The findings illustrate the ability of the CBD model to capture the statistical significance of culture.

Originality/value

The paper demonstrates the two innovative elements of the CBD approach to culture: first, measuring culture with a factor variable as a better alternative to the mono‐dimensional variables inferred by the state of the art; and second, thus capturing the overall economic meaning of the cultural factor (not just one aspect of it) for local socio‐economic development.

Citation

Tubadji, A. (2012), "Culture‐based development: empirical evidence for Germany", International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 39 No. 9, pp. 690-703. https://doi.org/10.1108/03068291211245718