Measures of cultural attitudes derived from the World Values Survey are often used in economics to investigate the relation between individual culture and aggregate output. We show (i) that these measures are constructed from underlying variables that exhibit within-country volatility and time trends; and (ii) that such lack of persistence implies fragile correlations between cultural measures and output. These points are illustrated by revisiting prominent studies in this literature.

中文翻译：

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文化调查指标的波动性及其后果

从世界价值观调查中得出的文化态度衡量标准经常在经济学中用于研究个体文化与总产出之间的关系。我们表明（i）这些指标是根据表现出国内波动性和时间趋势的基础变量构建的；(ii) 这种缺乏持久性意味着文化措施和产出之间的相关性很脆弱。通过回顾该文献中的著名研究来说明这些观点。