THE INFLUENCE OF VALUES ON SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

The study is devoted to providing new facts to support the influence of culture on the development of the country. We tried to interpret the phenomenon of eco-nomic growth through non-economic factors such as institutions, technology (in-novation), trust, culture, values. There is no single decisive factor of economic growth, it is always a set of unities. It is assumed that cultural values and eco-nomic performance in a country have a two-way relationship. Cultural values determine the social direction and complement the traditional factors of economic growth. Moreover, at the same time, they change under the influence of socio-economic development. A comparative analysis of different cultures requires identifying universal characteristics and grouping countries according to these characteristics. Categories of universal culture are the informal rules that underlie any social organization and form the basis of social relations. The categories of property rights, income distribution, competition, and environmental protection are among the main issues of society's existence and development. These catego-ries relate to economic values, the economic interests of the country. Values and attitudes largely determine the direction and rate of economic growth and, at the same time, are influenced by ideology, religion, and political regime. The purpose of this article is to determine the interdependence of society's values and its eco-nomic development. The main economic values are private property, competi-tion, and profit. It is possible to explore these categories of economic values through an analysis of data from the World Values Survey (WVS). Research methods. Regression is useful to test the relationship between economic values and well-being on the example of 36 countries. The initial data are economic val-ues statistics WVS (Greif, Mokyr, 2016) and GDP per capita, World Bank (GDP per capita (current US$)). The regression model includes independent (values) and dependent (GDP per capita) variables. Result. The study examined attitudes to private property, competition and environmental protection in European countries. A positive correlation was found between attitudes towards private property and well-being, between economic growth and environmental goals. The findings confirm the correlation between culture, values and economic growth. At the same time, there is no noticeable correlation between attitudes toward compe-tition and income levels. Institutional factors are assumed to have a particular influence on competition values.