Search results

The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief introduction to the topic of cultural research approaches that are applicable for investigating the interdependence of culture and labour. The “Introduction” notes two main constraints and four main research approaches that refer to this field of scientific exploration. The authors then outline and summarize the ten studies included in the International Journal of Manpower Special Issue, as well as acknowledge the main value added provided by each of them.

The Special Issue used a double-blind review process, employing one external referee and one cross-referee for each of the ten selected papers. The papers themselves represent a wide variety of designs, methodologies, and analytical strategies used to study culture and labour.

The findings of the studies included in this Special Issue touch on culture and diversity and cultural impact on migration, as well as on culture in the workplace and willingness to work.

Each article also draws attention to practical implications with regard to cultural impact for the particular country and/or regions examined in the study.

Together, the papers in this Special Issue help to make a clear distinction in macro- and micro-cultural economic research by shedding innovative light on the study of culture and labour from an international and interdisciplinary perspective.

Theoretical and empirical research on the impact of immigrants for local development is rather inconclusive regarding the direction of said impact. The purpose of this paper is to identify relationships between human capital and cultural capital, in the context of local labour market productivity.

As the key constituents of human capital, identified in the literature, are both the locally generated through investment in education and the inflowing through immigration human capital, the paper examines those jointly in a close-to-reality-model. To this end, the paper operationalizes and infers data on the “melting pot” of EU15, NUTS2 level. The sources of the data are the Eurostat Regional Database and the World Value Survey, which have served to construct both a cross-section for the year 2001. These data sets allows us to examine the different groups of migrating and local human capital, their interaction and joint impact on local productivity through three stage least square estimations of the simultaneous equations CBD model.

The evidence suggests that benefits from immigrants differ, not only due to their human capital, but also due to their culturally biased different bargaining power on the labour market.

The main advantage of the suggested model of productivity is that, in addition to accounting for the filigree composition of human capital, it also takes into consideration the cultural capital present in a locality. In this manner, the authors are able to examine the interaction between the quality of the incoming human capital and the cultural encounter context (generating the cultural “milieu” effect) of the modern diverse city.

The existing theoretical and empirical research on cultural impact is rather inconsistent. The purpose of this paper is to deal with the reasons for this inconsistency by debating the adequate inclusion of the cultural factor in the growth model and the way to properly measure cultural capital (CC) for this purpose.

The paper starts with analyzing the limitations of growth theory (in particular Paul Romer ' s endogenous growth model) when CC is not taken into consideration. The amelioration is suggested through involvement of the Weberian mechanism of cultural impact. The difference between Weber ' s mechanism and using religion as a measurement proxy for cultural attitudes is enlightened. The improvement of Weber ' s measurement of CC by elevating Pierre Bourdieu ' s approach to CC from individual to aggregate regional level is suggested. Real data from five EU countries on NUTS II level is addressed for illustrating the above reasoning.

The evidence shows that the suggested by the paper measurement strategy for CC allows for treating culture indeed as a single factor both in theoretical and econometrical sense of the term factor, but without loss of information, which is otherwise inevitable if the author try to approximate culture with a single mono-dimensional variable such as religion.

Through discussion on Rome ' s endogenous growth model and Weber ' s cultural mechanisms of impact, the amelioration of growth theory by inclusion of CC is explained, operationalized and applied on a real data example.

Migration waves have a significant impact on cultural diversity. But in various sections of the economy the authors observe large numbers of unregistered workers. The purpose of this paper is to map out the socio-economic situation of unregistered migrant workers and aims to identify the drivers of their labour market position in terms of job opportunities and salary. The specific focus of this study will be on undocumented immigrant workers involved in the domestic work (or household) sector in the Netherlands.

This paper offers empirical evidence on two levels: the individual level (migrant domestic workers), and the household level (from an employer perspective).

The paper finds that years of work experience and social network participation – in particular, family relationships and a combination of friends with employer relationships – increases the chances of finding a higher paid irregular job. From a household perspective, there appears to be a positive relationship between both the age of the employer and the size of the household on the one hand and the hours of domestic work needed per week on the other hand. Clearly, demographic change towards an ageing population will increase the demand for undocumented domestic workers.

Reliable data on undocumented immigrants living and working in developed economies are rare. This also holds true for the Netherlands. For labour unions, this is a neglected category of workers and hence it is important to investigate their job conditions.

The Netherlands is becoming an ageing society and this is a factor that increases the demand for irregular domestic work. This paper explores the role of ageing and labour market participation on household demand for irregular domestic work. Furthermore, the paper analyses the impact of social capital dimensions on access to a better-paid illegal job for undocumented migrant domestic workers in the Netherlands.

The purpose of this paper is to give structure to the argument that “culture matters.” Further, the aim is to show how cultural differences shape the use of incentives within firms and point toward culturally affected degrees of efficiency.

The paper incorporates differences in the evaluation of the stimuli money, order, and monitoring into a simple efficiency wage model. Profit maximizing firms are assumed.

It is found that the use of incentives should respect the cultural surrounding. Data from a real-world analysis can partly be explained with this model, which was not done before.

The major limitation lies in the abstract nature in which economic models deal with incentives.

The theoretical predictions are tested against the findings of Bloom and van Reenen (2007). Although the model may apparently contribute to the explanation of differences in the relative use of monitoring and pay, it fails in do so for directives. The reason for this shortcoming is identified in the impossibility to clearly compare the empirical notion of directives as found in Bloom and van Reenen (2007) to the theoretical notion of directives applied in the model.

The paper is one of the few approaches dealing with cultural differences on an individualistic basis. Most findings on the importance of intercultural variation offer econometric analysis, leaving open how exactly culture affects individual behavior such that the observed differences can be explained. The model presented offers exactly such a link.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse to what extent religious beliefs, understood as part of an individual ' s cultural background, can explain an individual ' s willingness to work. In particular the paper links individuals’ willingness to increase their working time with their religious denomination and their religious commitment. This relationship is studied in six European countries that have different religious structures: two countries with two significant religious groups (Germany and France), two Catholic countries (Ireland and Poland) and finally, two Lutheran states (Norway and Sweden).

Using data provided by the International Social Survey Programme 2007 – “Leisure Time and Sports” module [ISSP-2007], the paper estimates ordered probit models for each country separately.

The paper finds that there is not a unique link between religious beliefs and habits and the self-declared inclination to devote more time to paid work. First, the paper finds a positive association between religious involvement and an individual ' s self-declared willingness to work in Catholic-dominated countries. Second, this relationship is less pronounced in Protestant countries, where non-religious people are less inclined towards paid work than Protestants. Third, in France, Catholics are the most inclined towards paid work, especially those with high levels of religious involvement. Finally, the paper does not find any significant difference between Catholics and Protestants in Germany.

The role of religion has been largely ignored in economics for decades. This paper adds to the growing literature on the effects of religious beliefs and behaviour on economic outcomes.

Despite the growing literature aimed at explaining how cultural and artistic production feeds economic growth, the causal relationships and interplays are not investigated in depth. In the attempt of filling this gap, the purpose of this paper is to examine arts, culture, and education within the framework of the New Growth Theory.

Starting from the analysis of how culture may be at the root of a specific engine of economic growth, the paper presents a theoretical endogenous growth model driven by the combination of the investments in human and cultural capital.

The paper shows that cultural investment has a positive impact on economic growth and on the level of income provided that the economy is sufficiently “culture-intensive”, and that this effect is further magnified the more total factor productivity (TFP) is sensitive to the stock of cultural capital.

The paper figures out the possibility of a cultural poverty trap as the cause of poor growth performance of some economies in the current post-industrial scenario. Culturally poor economies tend to grow slowly because of the lack of cultural exposure, which makes TFP poor since human capita is weakly inclined to be used in innovative, flexible ways.

The paper presents a new endogenous growth model. The paper argues that the available endogenous growth models fail to take into account the full set of relevant factors that make endogenous growth possible, and that the missing entry is cultural capital.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the development elasticities of religious assets namely, the relationship between the stock of religious assets (religious buildings like mosques, mescits, turbehs, etc.) and economic development.

Development elasticities of religious assets with respect to development is empirically investigated for a cross-section of all Turkish cities with municipal authorities. Two different regression analyses use religious building in total number of building and percentage share of religiously conservatives parties vote as the dependent variable. Independent variables include various development measures.

It is found that the stock of religious assets is negatively related to the development. Also, it is found that economic development and the stock of religious assets have a non-linear relationship. Religious assets increase with industrialization first, however, as the industrialization increases more, they decrease. Coastal towns have smaller religious assets. Mosques/masjits and schools are complements rather than substitutes as they statistically significantly affect each other positively. For robustness check, a different measure of religiosity is used in empirical research. Vote shares of religiously conservative parties are smaller in developed regions of the country. In other words, religiously conservative parties attracted the poor or less developed parts of the country.

Economic development and religious assets are related to each other in a developing country case study. Increased economic development can cause religious assets to decline in this particular case study.

This paper uses a novel data set to study the relationship between development and religion in a developing country.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the social status of migrants in a culturally liberal and historically cosmopolitan port city in Turkey.

A novel data set from the Izmir Labor Market Household Survey is used. Social status is measured by occupational status, wages, and education. In addition, parents’ education, as well as, duration of unemployment for migrants is analyzed. Occupational status and education analyzes are based on ordered probit models. The probability that an individual with given characteristics will have an uneducated parent is estimated with a probit model. Weibull duration model is employed for the unemployment duration.

Migrants in Izmir are likely to have occupations that claim a lower status. Migrants have higher wages so migrants are taking jobs of lower status but higher pay. The probability of exiting unemployment for migrants is higher, that is the duration of unemployment for migrants is shorter. Male have higher education levels and receive higher wages. Parents’ education for migrants is lower in general. Female migrants have lower education levels than natives, male or female, and do not receive higher wages than female natives in the labor market. The paper concludes that the social status of migrant women is definitely lower than natives, male or female, and male migrants. Evidence on the social status of migrant men also points to a disadvantage as even though the male migrant is more educated on average, he is likely to hold an occupation of lower status.

This paper employs a novel data set to investigate the social status of migrants vs natives. In addition, it undertakes a multi-dimensional econometric analyses of social status. Unemployment has not been included in econometric analysis of social status before.

Theoretical and empirical research suggests a connection between the presence of role models and the emergence of entrepreneurs. Existing entrepreneurs may act as role models for self-employment candidates by providing successful examples. The purpose of this paper is to show that role models matter in aggregate decision outcomes regarding self-employment.

By explicitly considering the self-employment rates of the natives, which may influence locally the decisions of immigrants towards entrepreneurship, the authors develop a simple model that explains immigrant self-employment rates for a sample of 2,490 Swiss municipalities. In addition, the authors accommodate for the presence of spatial spillovers in the distribution of rates, and test a spatial autoregressive model which takes into account the average self-employment rates of immigrants living in nearby municipalities.

The evidence shows a significant (positive) effect of such spatial network effects, which are characterized by a quick distance decay, suggesting spatial spillovers at the household and social network level. Additionally, the paper shows that local conditions and immigrant pool characteristics differ, with respect to self-employment choices, when examining separately urban and rural contexts. Finally, a spatial sensitivity analysis shows that the findings are consistent over different assumptions on the nature of spatial interaction.

By using highly geographically disaggregated data, the authors are able to test the extent to which the influence of role models can be traced, and to measure these effects both within local units as well as in neighbouring units. Understanding the relationship between the native and immigrant attitudes towards entrepreneurship, the local characteristics of the immigrant community and geography is crucial in a country with a relevant share of the working population made up by immigrants.