National Values and Economic Growth

A bstract    Using data on economic values and attitudes for various nations from the World Value Study, I show that the strength of values associated with market success does not appear to have a significant impact on the rate of economic growth in a sample of developing and developed market economies. I also show that such values do not seem related to the economic system and have an ambiguous relation to the overall level of economic development. These negative results suggest that, contrary to common belief, knowledge about such values does not seem very useful in helping us understand economic growth or differences in levels of economic development or economic systems in various countries.