Suchergebnisse

Economic development is often held to be beneficial for gender equality. However, there is good reason to believe that long lasting institutions like religion, legal traditions, and family practices, also matter. This paper provides an empirical assessment of the relative importance of development and historical determinants of gender equality at the cross-national level. To capture this long-term relationship, a new index of gender equality that stretches back to 1960 is introduced. Besides data on legal and religious traditions of countries, we also employ lesser known data on family systems in the analysis of the index. We find that variables on the long lasting institutions of countries can be as important as economic development in determining gender equality outcomes. Thus, our study highlights the importance of considering the contextual and historical conditions of a country when analysing the determinants of gender equality gaps.

Abstract
Substantial literature demonstrates that flexible labor market institutions promote entrepreneurial activity. We re-evaluate this finding by considering the complementarity between institutions as advocated by the varieties of capitalism literature. We study the relevance of labor market regulations, wage-setting institutions and social security, and their complementarity for different types of entrepreneurial activity in 19 European countries and the USA. Two findings stand out. First, the four distinct bundles of labor market institutions characterizing Europe support different forms of entrepreneurial activity, and that innovative entrepreneurial activity also exists in less-flexible and -regulated labor market arrangements. Second, the relationships between single labor market institutions and entrepreneurial activity vary across the four institutional constellations. Therefore, to promote entrepreneurship in Europe, there is a need for tailored reform strategies that consider the diversity of the institutional constellations.

Although institutional reforms are necessary to increase rates of entrepreneurship in European countries, we argue that one-size-fits-all reform strategies are unlikely to be successful. Reform strategies must be informed by a better knowledge of the varieties of European capitalism and the institutional complementarities that drive these differences. We investigate these issues by gathering a number of potentially relevant entrepreneurial regime measurements as well as indicators of formal and informal institutions based on data available from the 2000s onward. We employ principal component analysis, factor analysis and cluster analysis to examine how 21 European countries and the United States cluster in the entrepreneurial and institutional dimensions. Our results reveal six country clusters, or entrepreneurial regimes, with a distinct bundle of entrepreneurial characteristics and institutional attributes. The main implication is that different reform strategies are appropriate to promote entrepreneurship and economic growth in European countries in different clusters.

This study offers a comprehensive investigation of the gender gap in political participation among 13 Muslim-majority nations using World Values Survey data and applying multilevel analyses. It reveals a substantial gender gap, with men being significantly more likely to be politically active compared to women. As suggested in studies on advanced Western democracies, this gap can be partly explained by gender differences in socioeconomic characteristics and political attitudes. Furthermore, our analysis shows major cross-national differences in the extent of the gender gap among Muslim-majority nations. In contrast to what we had expected, these cross-national differences cannot be explained by levels of state Islamisation, modernisation or societal gender equality. Implications of these findings and suggestion for further research are discussed.

Intro -- Contents -- Chapter 1: Cliometrics of the Family: Editors´ Introduction -- References -- Chapter 2: A Cliometric Model of Unified Growth: Family Organization and Economic Growth in the Long Run of History -- 2.1 Introduction -- 2.2 Related Literature -- 2.3 The Model -- 2.3.1 Production -- 2.3.1.1 Production of Final Output -- 2.3.1.2 The Production of Human Capital -- 2.3.1.3 Technological Progress -- 2.3.2 Individuals -- 2.3.2.1 Preferences and Budget Constraint -- 2.3.2.2 The Household Choice Problem -- 2.3.2.3 Choice of Human Capital and Fertility -- 2.3.3 Distribution of Labour Types -- 2.4 The Dynamic Evolution of the Economy -- 2.4.1 Dynamic Evolution of the Key Variables -- 2.4.1.1 The Fraction of Skilled Individuals -- 2.4.1.2 Dynamic Evolution of Gender Equality -- 2.4.1.3 Process of Technological Process -- 2.4.2 The Dynamical System -- 2.4.3 The Global Dynamics of Development -- 2.4.3.1 Non-developed Economy -- 2.4.3.2 Transitory Economy -- 2.4.3.3 Developed Economy -- 2.5 Conclusion -- References -- Chapter 3: Marital Fertility and Investment in Children´s Education -- 3.1 Introduction -- 3.2 Theoretical Background -- 3.3 Fertility Control in Preindustrial Europe -- 3.4 The Fertility Transition -- 3.4.1 The Role of Economic Factors -- 3.4.2 The Diffusion of New Cultural Norms -- 3.5 Early Childhood Education and Fertility -- 3.5.1 Kindergarten in Prussia -- 3.5.2 Data and Empirical Evidence -- 3.6 Conclusion -- References -- Chapter 4: A Critical Introduction to Instrumental Variables for Sibship Size Based on Twin Births -- 4.1 Introduction -- 4.2 The Challenge of Endogeneity When Studying the Effect from Sibship Size on Children -- 4.3 An Introduction to Instrumental Variable Techniques -- 4.4 An Introduction to Using Twin Births as Instrumental Variables.

Historically, gender inequalities in health status, socio-economic standing and political rights have been large. This chapter documents gender differences in life expectancy and birth rates (to cover health status); in average years of schooling, labour force participation, inheritance rights and marriage age (to cover socioeconomic status); and in parliamentary seats and suffrage (to cover political rights). A composite indicator shows strong progress in reducing gender inequality in the past 60 years in most regions. Only in East Asia and in Eastern Europe this decline stalled in the 1980s. Differences in levels of gender inequality between regions remained large, however: Europe (including Eastern Europe) and the Western Offshoots performed best, although no country reached full gender equality. The Middle East and North Africa (mainly due to weak political rights) and South and Southeast Asia (due to skewed sex ratios at birth) performed worst.