Cultural Factors Of Economic Growth

As traditional economic theories, which merely consider the influences made by production factors, are hard to explain the economic growth perfectly, this dissertation wants to point out the influence of culture to promote economic growth. Taking the economic growth of Zhejiang from the year of 1978 as an example, it shows that culture has made an important effort on economic growth.This dissertation was divided into four parts.Centering on the source of economic growth, the first part made a brief review of development literature, pointing out that modern economic theory has changed from the research of factors of production to non-economic factors such as historical background, social system, culture, etc.The second part defined the concept of culture, and analyzed the mechanism of culture to economics and the disparity of regional economies in different culture.The third generalized "The Phenomenon of Zhejiang" by illustrating the developing of Zhejiang economy, and pointed out that systemic innovation was critical to "The Phenomenon of Zhejiang", including the "lump-shaped" systemic innovation, institutional innovation of the circulation of fund and the government management.The forth part analyzed the innovative spirit in the systemic innovation, and traced the cultural sources of this innovative spirit from the genesis of Zhejiang culture, geographic environment and the pragmatic philosophy. The analysis eventually showed that Zhejiang culture was innately compatible with the market economy.The fifth part tried to propose the establishment of the traditional culture based on the concept of the new economic development model. Namely that economic growth is under the influence of the traditional culture of the main market of capital, technology, systems, labor and other production factors to the rational combination to promoting economic growth.