which then become part of the behavioral repertoire of the individual.” (p.80). PalaciosHuerta and Santos (2004) develop a general equilibrium model in which attitudes towards risk are a function of exposure to market risk and market incompleteness. However, most of such contributions are theoretical and openly call for further empirical research to assess the magnitude of these effects.<sup>14</sup> From a policy perspective, understanding the relationship between aspects of culture that are malleable and economic development would be more interesting, as it would open up the possibility for intervention. Naturally, this possibility would be likely to generate heated debates. The World Bank’s 2015 World Development Report – which builds on evidence from behavioral sciences – cites a number of examples of interventions that have determined a cultural change to trigger improvements in welfare: one example is political affirmative action for women in West Bengal, where men used to have a biased opinion of women in leadership positions. As a consequence of the intervention, the gender gap in schooling was reduced.

Going back to the Japanese example, certain attributes from two and half centuries of samurai culture may have facilitated Japan’s fast modernization (discipline and frugality come to mind), but we have seen the potent role played by the Meiji government’s thirst and admiration for foreign technologies and know-how, its readiness to expand trade with the West, and its decision to prioritize economic development over military adventures. Crucial for Japan’s success was the recognition of the superiority of Western science and technology and thus, implicitly, the acceptance of the inadequacy of purely Japanese ways. What was needed was the opening of Japanese culture to the potential benefits of interactions with other cultures abroad, which were at a more advanced stage of development. These interactions helped release the power of favorable Japanese cultural traits, contributing along the way to change and to the enrichment of Japanese culture itself. Of course, this process was symmetric. Japan’s own development has had a tangible influence on the development of other countries. In a 1994 interview with _Foreign Affairs_ ’ Fareed Zakaria, Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s patriarch, spoke of the advantages of being able to look at Japan as a role model, providing his country with a sense of direction and a vision of “what the end result should be.” Similar remarks would apply to Korea and Taiwan, two other Asian success stories. So, 20th century Japan, with its formidable industrial sector and its well-developed innovation capacity, has been a source of ideas, technologies and know-how to the rest of the world and has thus helped shape and change the cultures of other countries.

> 14 An example from the empirical literature is the paper by Bertrand and Schoar (2006), which analyzed how family values measured by the World Values Survey changed across 19 countries and over the period 1980-2000. They concluded that family values appear to be quite stable even in countries with fast growth rates and across generations. On the other hand, Miguel and others (2006) examined the relationship between industrialization and changes in measures of social networks in Indonesia over the period 19851997: the interpretation of their results suggests that social interaction increased in rapidly industrializing districts, while it might have decreased in districts from which people migrated towards more industrialized areas.

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