The Culture Transplant: How Migrants Make the Economies They Move to a Lot Like the Ones They Left

Over the last two decades, as economists studied the statistical evidence of the best predictors of national prosperity around the world, one of their repeated findings was that cultural variables were robust predictors of economic performance. The Culture Transplant documents the cultural foundations of cross-country income differences, and draws on recent research literatures showing that immigrants bring economically important cultural attitudes that persist for decades, even centuries, to the nations they move to. Through analysis of recent academic research, as well as the author's own findings, Jones demonstrates how cultural traits that substantially survive migration are one group of proximate causes of both poverty and future prosperity.