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The Feminisation U describes the tendency of female labour force participation (FLFP) to first decline and then rise in the process of economic development. While the Feminisation U is often presented as a ‘stylised fact’ of development, empirical support for it is mixed. Here, we show that cultural norms inherited from ancestral plough use exert a moderating influence on the shape of the Feminisation U. Specifically, we find a significantly U-shaped path of FLFP only in countries whose ancestors employed a plough-based agricultural technology. The shape of the U-curve becomes progressively more muted as the share of a country's ancestors that practiced plough agriculture decreases. In countries with little or no legacy of historical plough use, the time path of FLFP is effectively flat. This pattern of results is robust to correcting for dynamic panel bias, instrumenting for per-capita income, and controlling for other potential effect modifiers. Our findings are compatible with a nuanced reading of the main theoretical models proposed in the literature to explain the Feminisation U.

The feminization U, which describes the tendency of female labor force participation (FLFP) to first decline and then rise as per capita income grows, is a well-known “stylized fact” of economic development. Empirical studies have documented this pattern using cross-country, time series, subnational, and, most recently, panel data. Overall, the evidence confirms the existence of a U-shaped relationship between per capita GDP and female labor supply, at least for an important subset of countries. The theoretical literature has also described several mechanisms from which a U-shaped relationship may arise. In particular, the U-curve has been linked to structural change, fertility dynamics, and to variation in the gender gap in education levels along the process of economic development. Some recent contributions have highlighted important heterogeneities in the income path of FLFP: whether each of these three mechanisms is operative depends on initial conditions – specifically, the gender-role cultural norms that prevail as an economy embarks on the process of economic development. Accordingly, the income path of FLFP has been shown to be more or less U-shaped depending on initial conditions.

Citizens' tax compliance should not only respond to the quality of formal institutions, but might also be culturally driven. We contribute to this literature by investigating whether tax morale, an individual's intrinsic non-pecuniary motivation to comply with taxes, is associated with the cultural values (following Hofstede's typology) held by this individual. The analysis exploits four waves of the European Values Survey (1981-2010) across 48 countries. The cultural dimensions are constructed through a polychoric principal component analysis on a set of relevant survey items consistent with Hofstede's definitions. Ordered logit estimations suggest that although values of individualism and femininity are associated with higher individual's tax morale, power distance and uncertainty avoidance are associated with lower tax morale. These results remain consistent as we increase the level of granularity of our investigation through within-region analyses and, subsequently, within-cohort analyses. We argue that these results inevitably enrich the emerging debate about cultural values and citizens' compliance with formal institutions. They also indicate that societal culture as well as individual values should be considered when designing policies aiming to improve tax compliance.

This paper explores the determinants of productivity gaps within the European Union in computing, chemicals, basic metals and food manufacturing – four sectors that vary in terms of the intensity of sectoral R&D. Our analysis reveals that the main causes of these productivity gaps are intensity of unembodied or disembodied R&D activity and R&D embodied in purchased equipment and machinery, and their interplay. While disembodied and embodied R&D are both associated positively to closing productivity gaps, the interaction between the two does not have the same effect. There is no complementarity between these technology acquisition modes, despite both disembodied and embodied technology are crucial for productivity catch up. In a policy context, this suggests possible lack of coordination between R&D policy and technology transfer (that is, foreign direct investment, trade and industrial policy). We show, also, that the productivity gap between ‘peripheral’ (southern and eastern) and ‘north’ EU countries is widening.

Economists and social scientists have long debated the relative importance of institutions and human capital as fundamental determinants of long-run development. After discussing some of the limitations of the existing literature, we use panel data covering the period 1955-2010 and a novel indicator of property rights protection from Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) to reinvestigate these relationships. We find that both property rights institutions and human capital are positively related to economic growth, although human capital is relatively more robust when we account for country fixed effects. We also investigate whether the growth effects of property rights institutions are heterogeneous across different levels of development. In contrast to the cross-country evidence, our panel data results suggest that broad-based property rights protection clearly and strongly enhances growth only in advanced economies.

The impact of the introduction of the EU Single Area Payments (SAP) on farm strategy is investigated for a sample of Lithuanian farms, utilising farm accounting and survey data. The applications of two investment models demonstrate that the credit market in Lithuania was imperfect prior to accession and that some farms were financially constrained. The introduction of the SAP has a significant, positive influence on farmers’ intentions to expand their farm area compared to a baseline scenario of the continuation of pre-accession policy. The switch in policy has a more pronounced effect on farms that were previously credit constrained. While the SAP has been presented as a policy support that is decoupled from production, its introduction will nevertheless have ex post coupled effects, most notably an income multiplier effect on credit constrained farmers.