Economic home bias and cultural attitudes: a study on European students

This paper focuses on the role of embeddedness of individuals in social networks and the “home bias” in trade effect. Despite the large amount of theoretical and applied studies on the home bias effect, there is no unique theory explaining existing evidence. We examine the role of embeddedness by analysing survey data based on questionnaires handed out to university students of eleven European countries. Home bias seems to be deeply rooted in individuals’ attitudes and correlated to the degree of openness in cultural choices that go beyond the purely economic sphere. In other words culture seems one basis of economic home bias.