Cultural Economics

The study of how human culture interacts with economic events and conditions. Culture, in this sense, includes everything we are: our political systems, religious beliefs, ethnic character, economic psychology, mores, traditions, history, customs, arts, sciences, and education. These all play a role in how we chose to organize the production of goods and services, the values we place on labor and opportunity, how we make purchase and investment decisions, and how we utilize the resources of this earth. The term "Economics" refers to the extent and process of how we employ capital, labor and materials. In the aggregate, these drive the data that is used to measure how our economy is behaving - markets, raw materials, production, finished goods, revenues, costs, profits, inventory, employment, housing, income, savings, stocks, bonds - and so on.

 Cultural Economists must have a strong sense of the cultural matrix within which economic phenomena occur. However irrational they may appear, values and traditions are non-the-less relevant to economic analysis. Political and religious allegiance influence purchase decisions. Fear and greed are economic motivators. Attitudes about education, individual rights, the accumulation of wealth and the importance of private property drive the adoption of economic systems and political institutions. Collectivist, dictatorial and democratic solutions compete for political power that will determine how labor, capital and material resources are allocated and managed. Culture defines the collective manifestations of who and what we are, including our religious beliefs, political systems, customs, values, intellectual acumen and creative endeavors. 

Economic research frequently yields inadequate conclusions based on irrelevant or obsolete data that has been interpreted using algorithms of questionable relevance. In other words - we play with the numbers. It's a great academic exercise. Then we project our conclusions into the future on the basic assumption that future reality will be an extension of past reality.

Sometimes it actually works. We can usually make reasonable estimates of near term demand and consumption, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), inflation, employment and so on. We have a reasonable probability of success if we are making a specific forecast for event driven data that will occur within the next three to six months. It helps our accuracy if future events within the forecast period are well understood and relatively static. In other words – our economic environment will not be altered by any surprises such as weather disasters or unanticipated political events.

Unfortunately, the longer the forecast period, the higher the margin of error. Cultural change is a given. Our economic environment is always evolving in reaction to current events. If we only use historical data as the basis of our economic analysis, then forecasts that extend out beyond a year or two will be something of a crap shoot.

Why? Because the future is NEVER an exact duplicate of the past.