Do religious beliefs affect borrowing behavior? Evidence from Chinese households

This paper discusses the impact of religious culture on micro financial decisions. Data concerning the religious beliefs of Chinese respondents was collected in 2007. We analyzed the data for the potential influence of religious beliefs on household borrowing decisions. By applying the ordered logit regression methods and IV estimator, we found that respondents with a religious family background borrowed less when other conditions remained unchanged. It was also discovered that, compared with non-believers, Buddhists borrow less than adherents of other religions. No other religious beliefs had a statistically significant influence. That is to say, different religious denominations exert different influences on Chinese household borrowing decisions.     

Do private and public transfers received affect life satisfaction? Evidence from Romania

This paper uses Romanian survey data to investigate the determinants of individual life and financial satisfaction, with an emphasis on the role of public and private transfers received. A possible concern is that these transfers are unlikely to be exogenous to satisfaction. We use recursive simultaneous equations models to account both for this potential problem and for the fact that public transfers are themselves endogenous in the private transfer equation. We find that public transfers received have a positive influence on both life and financial satisfaction, while private transfers do not matter. People receive private transfers irrespective of their economic and demographic characteristics in Romania, which could be explained by some social norm motives.     

Trapped in migrants’ sectors? Polish women in the Icelandic labour market

The employment‐driven migrations from Poland to Iceland have largely been pioneered by Polish women. They outnumbered men among Polish residents in this country until the economic boom since 2005 triggered large‐scale male immigration. This trend slowed down with the outbreak of the financial crisis, as the recession severely affected the male‐dominated construction industry. The analysis of Polish female migrants’ working experiences shows that recent inflows are mainly shaped by the nature of labour demand as well as the social policies and care services in Iceland. Although economically integrated, compared with native women Polish women tend to occupy rather disadvantaged positions. They seem concentrated in a few low‐skilled occupations that bring little prestige and low income. On the other hand, they were less affected by the financial crisis, in the sense that many of them maintained work, though some experienced lowering of salaries or reduction of working hours.     

Are labour inspections effective when labour regulations vary according to the size of the firm? Evidence from Peru

This article analyses the impact of enforcement of four labour standards (pension system enrolment, minimum wage, maximum weekly working hours and written employment contract) on compliance in Peru, where labour regulations and penalties vary according to firm size. The author uses household survey data to analyse a factor not previously studied – adjustment by firms through downsizing to benefit from lower fines and less stringent regulations. The empirical findings indicate that enforcement efforts have little effect on either the degree of compliance or the size of firms.     

Do economic conditions affect climate change beliefs and support for climate action? Evidence from the US in the wake of the Great Recession

I show that climate skepticism increases with negative economic shocks and that the effects are concentrated among individuals in the labor force. I primarily employ a panel of US individuals in the period following the Great Recession, but also find consistent results with an alternative instrumental variables strategy. Among labor force participants, a one-percentage point increase in the local unemployment rate leads to a three to five percentage point decrease in the probability of believing climate change is real and requires action. I conclude that support for climate change policies could depend on labor market conditions.     

Do shocks affect men's and women's assets differently? Evidence from Bangladesh and Uganda

Using panel data, this article tests whether shocks affect men's and women's assets differently in Bangladesh and Uganda. Across countries, covariate and idiosyncratic shocks have different effects on men's, women's and jointly owned assets. Jointly held land and assets were better insured against food price increases in Bangladesh, unlike jointly held assets and wives’ assets in Uganda. Weather shocks affect husbands’ and wives’ assets differently in both countries. Reflecting contextual differences, illness shocks negatively affected wives’ land in Bangladesh, while death reduced husbands’ non‐land assets. In Uganda, fuel price increases eroded husbands’ landholdings, while drought shocks reduced wives’ assets. Ugandan husbands’ assets were better protected against covariate shocks than wives’ assets.     

Does perceived unfairness affect charitable giving? Evidence from the dictator game

We use a modified version of the dictator game to study whether perceived unfairness affects giving. To earn money, dictators first had to take a test. Our treatment group had participants taking tests of different difficulty levels while the control group had all participants taking a test of the same difficulty level. We found that participants who were in an environment where everyone faced the same challenge to earn money were less generous than participants in an environment where some people had an advantage while others had a disadvantage.     

Exploring the nonverbal facet of ethnic discrimination: a field experiment on anti-Roma racism in the Paris métro

A field experiment on the discrimination of Roma migrants from Eastern Europe was conducted in two stations of the Paris metro to explore the behaviors that may communicate misrecognition in everyday encounters. An actress asked for help to randomly chosen passengers on a metro platform, wearing a glaringly Romani skirt in the treatment condition but an unconspicuous middle-class style in the control condition. In interaction with the actress wearing the Romani skirt, passengers were found to enact the so-called “visual dominance pattern”, and male passengers in particular were found to keep greater distances. Reverse discrimination also occurred as women kept shorter distances from the actress bearing the ethnic stigma. Last, passengers helped less the stigmatized actress, but only in one of the two metro stations where trials were conducted.     

Does perceived incongruence in opinion climate influence the degree of outspokenness? Evidence from two national events in China

This study extends the spiral silence theory and investigates the influence of perceived incongruence in opinion climate on individuals' intentions to express their true thoughts. Three intervening variables were examined to explain the process by which perceived incongruence in opinion climate leads to self-censorship: ambivalence, perceived opinion support, and internet political efficacy. Using data collected in telephone interviews with a random sample of 1020 Chinese residents in Shanghai and Guangzhou, we found that individual perceptions of the opinion climate varied considerably, and they were based on different media outlets. The Chinese audience is able to tell the difference between traditional media and the internet in terms of the features of their content. Moreover, among the Guangzhou residents, we found that the perceived incongruence in opinion climate was negatively related to the individual's willingness to express his or her true thoughts. Perceived opinion support was found the most robust intervening variable among the three proposed mediators.     

Double emigration: geographical and cultural? The participation of Italian women in the German labour market

Already at the beginning of the fifties on the initiative of Italy, negotiations began between the Italian and German governments for the recruitment of migrant-workers, which ended in 1955 with a bilateral agreement between the two countries. Through this recruitment policy and because of the labour-market (Industry and Building) the Italian migration was composed prevalently of men. Female immigration happened in the setting of family reunification and less as an independent movement project. After years of stagnation of italian emigration in the eighties it may also be noted that, since the early nineties, there has been a revival of immigration to Germany. This and modernisation processes in Italy changed the gender composition of the Italian immigration flow to Germany: the distance between male and female immigration is decreasing. A peculiarity of the Italians in Germany is the low occupational participation of women in comparison with other women from EU countries. However, we could observe regional differences, which depend on the migration typologies and the dominating economic structure in the areas. The paper will analyse this different aspects (immigration-processes, migrant-typologies and labour-market participation) by female Italian migrants.     

What explains the gender gap in wealth? Evidence from administrative data

Review of Economics of the Household - This paper studies the gender gap in net wealth. We use administrative data on wealth that are linked to the Estonian Household Finance and Consumption...     

Closing the market as the only protection? Trade unions and the labor market in the French performing arts industry from 1919 to 1937

The case of trade unions in the French performing arts industry between the two World Wars will serve here to test the hypothesis advanced in the Sociology of Professions and Theory of closed Labor Market whereby workers seek to improve their chances by attempting to limit its access. In line with that hypothesis, lyrical and dramatic actors tried to control the market, in particular by making it compulsory to hold a professional license. Contrary to what the theory proclaims, however, musicians’ trade unions sought to control wages and employment by implementing a strategy of maximum receptivity, i.e. by accepting anyone who entered the market. The article shows how those different strategies molded group identities, by tracing the borders of legitimacy and influencing the nature and extent of solidarities that cropped up in the milieu. Beyond the divergent strategies, two contrasting prospects of emancipation emerge from this study: emancipation as professionals for an elitist and exclusive group of actors and opera singers, emancipation as wage-earners for an inclusive, non-elitist group of musicians.     

Do immigrants counter the effect of cultural distance on trade? Evidence from US state-level exports

We examine the effects of immigrants and cultural distance on US state-level exports, placing emphasis on the extent to which immigrants may offset the influence of cultural distance with respect to the initiation and intensification of exports. Our findings suggest that greater cultural differences between the US and immigrants’ home countries reduce both the likelihood that exporting occurs and, when exporting is taking place, the level of exports. Immigrants are found to exert pro-export effects that offset, at least partially, the trade-inhibiting effects of cultural distance. The estimated effects of both cultural distance and immigrants are found to be greater when the level of exports is examined as compared to when the likelihood that exporting occurs is considered; however, significant variation in the export-initiation and intensification effects of immigrants and cultural distance is reported across states.     

Inequality of opportunity and (unequal) opportunities in the youth labour market: How is the Arab world different?

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) labour market is emblematic of widespread youth unemployment and high discouragement rates, experiencing disproportionately high levels of unemployment among educated young people. Using ILO School-to-Work Transition Surveys for Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia, the authors explore whether this is related to inequality of opportunity or to deeper structural characteristics that create a mismatch between skill demand and supply on the labour market. The low availability of high-skilled jobs and the low value placed on skills gained through the system of vocational training are found to have high explanatory power.     

Do Rural Students Really Perform Worse than Urban Students Do? Empirical Evidence from a University Entrance Program in Taiwan

Despite a major expansion in the number of students in higher education, students from rural areas continue to be underrepresented at selective universities. To reduce the urban‐rural imbalance of entry to selective universities, institutions in many countries of the world have implemented admission policies favoring rural students. Previous evidence has shown that rural students have lower academic performance than their urban peers, which leads to concern that rural students will reduce the academic excellence of selective universities. Using the introduction of a university admission policy favoring rural students in Taiwan and a unique administrative data set of students' academic records, we compare the academic performance of students from rural areas with that of their urban counterparts during their college years. The results show that rural students have consistently outperformed urban students in semester grade point averages and class rank percentile across time; however, the differences in academic performance are mainly attributed to the rural students' initial outperformance in the first semester of the freshman year.     

Can welfare and labour market regimes explain cross‐country differences in the unemployment of young people?

No single institution can reduce (long‐term) youth unemployment. Welfare and labour market institutions function as “bundles”, through multiple inter‐institutional synergies. Based on a focused literature review for theory and on cluster analysis for empirics, the author identifies five such regimes across the EU‐27 and estimates their effects on the youth unemployment ratio and on long‐term youth unemployment. The most helpful institutional arrangement for young people in the labour market would be a combination of strong dual apprenticeship embedded in a corporatist labour market regime with high levels of social security, active labour market policy, and spending on education and childcare.     

Do Immigrants Catch‐up with the Natives in Terms of Earnings? Evidence from Individual Level Data of Canada

This article analyses differences in dynamic transitions into and out of any of the five hourly wage quintiles and quintile zero (unemployed and non‐employed people) between immigrants and natives for the period 1993‐2004. Using Longitudinal Level data from Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) for men aged 25 to 55, we investigate how unobserved heterogeneity factors and initial conditions may affect individuals’ propensity to stay in or leave any of the wage quintiles. We also consider a dynamic multinomial logit model with the random effects approach. Empirical results show that state dependence exists in all hourly wage quintiles. Moreover, education, experience, marital status, immigrant minority status, and age at immigration are significant factors determining hourly wage differentials between immigrants and natives.     

Who bears the burden of bribery? Evidence from public service delivery in Kenya

This article empirically examines how an individual's economic, social and political capital affects their propensity to make bribe payments in exchange for public services. Using an individual‐level survey on bribes, the econometric results suggest that the burden of bribery is borne by the poor, but substantially decreases when institutions that constrain bureaucratic corruption are strong and effective. The results also show that the incidence of bribery decreases when social capital is high but increases when political networks are prevalent. These findings support the need to combine anti‐corruption reforms with poverty reduction strategies and social policies in order to foster equity in public services provision in Kenya.     

Correction: What explains the gender gap in wealth? Evidence from administrative data

Review of Economics of the Household -     

Do people have accurate beliefs about the behavioral consequences of incidental emotions? Evidence from trust games

The present study examined people’s expectations of how incidental emotions could shape others’ reciprocity in trusting situations, whether these expectations affect people’s own behavior, and how accurate these expectations are. Study 1 explored people’s beliefs about the effects of different incidental emotions on another person’s trustworthiness in general. In Studies 2 and 3, senders in trust games faced angry, guilty, grateful, or emotionally neutral responders. Participants who were told about their counterpart’s emotional state acted consistently with their beliefs about how these emotions would affect the other’s trustworthiness. These beliefs were not always correct, however. There were significant deviations between the expected behavior of angry responders and such responders’ actual behavior. These findings raise the possibility that one player’s knowledge of the other’s emotional state may lead to action choices that yield poor outcomes for both players.