Sociology of Culture Commons^™

Architecture, Social Norms, And Their Economic Consequences In Japan, Koichi Kume

Japanese Society and Culture

Law and market mechanisms presuppose that people are rational. With the diversification of lifestyles and values, however, there is a limit to appealing only to economic rationality to implement social policies. In this study we focus on architecture as a policy instrument that does not presuppose people’s rationality and empirically analyze the effect on economic consequences in Japan. Specifically, we examine the relationship between bank transfers and poverty reduction, and that between statues (Sontoku Ninomiya, Jizo) and labor norms. The results suggest that the use of architecture in policy can improve policy effectiveness regardless of people’s irrationality and heterogeneous preferences.