Economists use LLMs to analyze 23,000 Western canon books, creating a long-run cultural series for growth models

_akpiper · x · 2026-07-30

Economist Radek Stefanski used LLMs to read 23,000 books from the Western canon, scoring each for the cultural values it endorses, creating a long-run cultural series from year 0 to 1920. The research aims to incorporate culture into growth models, filling a gap in historical quantitative cultural data.

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