Culture and Economic Behavior

The article looks into the nature of culture and applicability of culture-centered paradigm for explanation of economic behavior and development. The author challenges the concept of cultural relativism, which advocates the idea of equivalence and harmonicity of all cultures. Due to the above stated, some examples of different countries, national and religious communities are sited to illustrate the difference between efficiency and inefficiency of cultural values. The author justifies the necessity to shape modern moral mindsets in Russian society on the basis of them being vital to the progressive development both in economy and society. The emphasis is put on the well-known limitation of the homo economicus model, as well as on the expansion of the economics object field by taking into account non-economic factors and decision making motives of economic subjects.