CBD COURSE

In 2023, Swansea University was the first host of the university taught one-semester long module on the Culture Based Development (CBD) paradigm. The course is designed to introduce third-year under-graduate students  to the CBD approach to factoring in cultural bias in economic choice in order to obtain economic models that achieve a better fit to reality. 

The model introduces you to the founding principles of the CBD paradigm by introducing the notions of cultural bias, cultural capital and cultural distance, which are fundamental in understanding the complex dynamic entity culture as a source of bias in economic choice.

The module refreshes the student’s knowledge of the selection of basic economic models, demonstrates how they fall short when cultural bias is not factored into the modelling, and ultimately demonstrates how the accurate augmentation of these models with the CBD notion of cultural bias cures each such model of its inaccuracy and imprecision.

The selected applications of CBD presented in this module include basic micro-economic models of migration choice, innovation, regional development, voting and cooperation. CBD applications are most relevant for understanding the processes in individual economic decision making, embedded in local cultural context, and the related implications for regional economic development.

Syllabus

•Intro: Culture in Economic Choice & the Culture Based Development Paradigm

Block 1: Main CBD Notions
•Cultural capital
•Cultural distance
•Cultural entropy

Block 2: Direct Cultural Bias in Economic Choice
•Cultural bias, cognition & taste for discrimination
•Cultural gravity, migration & innovation
•Cultural frictions and redistribution of growth across regions

Block 3: Indirect Cultural Bias on Human Flourishing
•Cultural critique of the contract curve & voting behaviour
•Cultural clubs, religion, cooperation and the Great Transformations
•Beyond CBD – alternative New Cultural Economic approaches to cultural bias and choice