Excellent piece of historical economic cultural evolution research! I will have to read it in more detail today.

📄 Doux Commerce: Markets, Culture, and Cooperation in 1850–1920 U.S.
👥 Max Posch & Itzchak Tzachi Raz
Read the full paper here:
🔗https://dropbox.com/scl/fi/xydg1vid6a8pw8zmvw8yc/Posch_Raz_Markets.pdf?rlkey=4b4qwrdkdv47ri5721mfwy92v&dl=0

17/17

Bottom line:

We provide new support for the doux commerce hypothesis:
markets➡️impersonal prosocial norms, generalized trust, and broader patterns of cooperation

⚠️BUT markets also weakened traditional kin-based social insurance. Marx and Polanyi aren't entirely wrong!

16/17

2️⃣ Multiple indirect channels❌

Population diversity🫂, economic development🏭, access to information📰, and legal institutions🏛️—may have played some role, but none appear to account for the link between market access and generalized cooperative culture and behavior

15/17

WHY❓Mechanisms:

1️⃣ A direct channel✅
Adaptation is concentrated in individuals more exposed to commerce and whose livelihood depends on it
⏩ More frequent and beneficial exchanges with strangers and increased economic interdependence is a key driver

14/17

Cultural adaptation paid off❗
Families who adjusted to the local, market-integrated norms had:

▪️Higher property values 📈🏡
▪️Lower child mortality 📉👶🪦

13/17

HOW❓

We track domestic migrants and find:

❌ Selective sorting

✅ Adaptation: People moving to more market-integrated areas adapted quickly

⬆️They become more universalistic
⬆️Higher cooperation in the labor force
⬆️More cooperation with non-kin at home

12/17

🧩 Then we ask: Did greater market access lead to more generalized cooperative culture and behavior?

✅ YES ‼️

1️⃣ strengthened generalized cooperative cultural traits
2️⃣ increased impersonal cooperation
3️⃣ reduced kin-based cooperation

11/17

Our cultural and behavioral measures are deeply connected. Generalized cooperative culture is associated with:

⬆️ More impersonal cooperative behavior
⬇️ Less kin-based cooperation

10/17

For cooperative behavior, we measure:

🤝 Impersonal cooperation across different spheres of social life: at work, in innovation, at home, and within the community

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦👴👵 Kin-based cooperation with the share of vulnerable individuals cared for by relatives at home

9/17

🧠 We measure generalized cooperative culture focusing on universalism, tolerance, and generalized trust—traits supporting cooperation with strangers, using indicators from Raz (2025) and a novel NLP measure of local historical newspapers

8/17

We measure market integration using a county-level “Market Access” following Donaldson & Hornbeck (2016)

📈 Counties saw big, uneven increases in market access over time, driven by the expansion of the railroad network and by population growth 🚂🛤️

7/17

🌐Producers shifted from local subsistence to market-oriented production
🗺️ Long-distance trade rapidly expanded
🛒 Household consumption became increasingly reliant on distant sellers

6/17

To test these ideas empirically, we focus on 1850–1920 US.

During this period, the US became the world’s most integrated economy and transformed into a “market society,” where markets became a central organizing force of life:

5/17

Critics like Marx and Polanyi argued that markets erode morality, commodify social relationships, and foster alienation and exploitation

4/17

Philosophers and social scientists have debated the moral and social implications of markets for centuries, but it remains contested and politicized. Enlightenment thinkers such as Montesquieu and Smith argued that commerce softens manners and reduces prejudice

3/17

📢 In our 🆕working paper (with @raztzachi.bsky.social
), we show that as markets expanded, Americans became more universalistic, tolerant, trusting, and cooperative

🔗https://dropbox.com/scl/fi/xydg1vid6a8pw8zmvw8yc/Posch_Raz_Markets.pdf?rlkey=4b4qwrdkdv47ri5721mfwy92v&e=1&dl=0

2/17