Country-specific preferences and employment rates in Europe

Simone Moriconi and Giovanni Peri

European Economic Review, 2019, vol. 116, issue C, 1-27

Abstract: European countries exhibit significant differences in employment rates of adult males. Differences in average labor-leisure preferences, determined by cultural values that vary across countries, can be responsible for part of these differences. However, differences in labor market institutions, productivity, and skills of the labor force are also crucial factors and likely correlated with preferences. In this paper we use variation among first- and second-generation European migrants to isolate the effect of culturally determined labor-leisure preferences on individual employment rates. If migrants maintain some of their country of origin labor-leisure preferences as they move to different labor market conditions, we can separate the impact of these culturally determined preferences from the effect of other factors. We find that country-specific labor-leisure preferences explain about 24% of the top-bottom variation in employment rates across European countries.

Keywords: Labor-leisure preferences; Cultural transmission; Employment; Europe; Migrants (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J22 J61 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014292119300480
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Country-specific preferences and employment rates in Europe (2019)
Working Paper: Country-Specific Preferences and Employment Rates in Europe (2019)
Working Paper: Country-Specific Preferences and Employment Rates in Europe (2015)
Working Paper: Country-Specific Preferences and Employment Rates in Europe (2015)
Working Paper: Country-Specific Preferences and Employment Rates in Europe (2015)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:116:y:2019:i:c:p:1-27

DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2019.03.008

Access Statistics for this article

European Economic Review is currently edited by T.S. Eicher, A. Imrohoroglu, E. Leeper, J. Oechssler and M. Pesendorfer

More articles in European Economic Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().