Impact of Intangible Cultural Capital on Regional Economic Development: A Study on Culture-Based Development in Greece

The main aim of the paper is to explore the nature and consequences of intangible cultural capital, i.e., the local ‘milieu’ comprising inter alia attitudes and preferences, for the case study of Greece, 2002-2009. To pursue this study empirically, we combine basic economic and social indicators from two main sources: the EUROSTAT Regional Database and the European Social Survey (ESS). Employing a three-stage least squares (3SLS) model for both a normal and a pooled cross-sectional data set, we find that local cultural factors play an important role in the emergence and existence of spatial economic disparities in Greece. Most interestingly, among all the approximations of intangible cultural capital examined, the historical cultural variable appeared to show the most consistent results throughout all specifications. This suggests the existence of cultural persistence traits in local economic development in Greece, a phenomenon which merits further investigation.