Three essays on cultural evolution

This tesis is focused on the study of the evolution of preferences, social norms and attitudes in a framework in which they evolve together with the surrounding environment and in which agents are called to make choices. Thus, this thesis takes the approach of the economics of cultural evolution studying three different issues. The first part is devoted to the analysis of the intergenerational evolution of interethnic attitudes and the possibility of the rising of an ethnic based social hierarchy: particular emphasis is devoted to the study of different levels of integration reached by different groups and to the role of different social influences structures in order to get these results. In the second part of the thesis there is an analysis of the school segregation outcomes based on the evolution of interethnic preferences and on the school choice by parents: we analyse how segregation outcomes may arise and how interethnic preferences are endogenously influenced by these social conditions. In the third contribution, using an evolutionary game theoretic framework, there is an analysis of the diffusion of a social norm when a mechanism of cultural evolution is considered, particularly allowing agents to persuade others about the fitness level of own type, thus obtaining innovative results with respect to the standard cases.