143. "Gender culture and gender gap in employment"
          by Pamela Campa, Alessandra Casarico, Paola Profeta

This paper analyzes to what extent gender culture affects gender gap in
employment. Drawing on Italian data, we measure culture by building two
indices: one based on individual attitudes, as done in the existing literature;
one based on firms' attitudes. Firms' deliefs, which express their set of ideas,
values and norms, though generally neglected, are as important as individuals'
attitudes to explain female balor market outcomes. Using an instrumental
variable analysis, we show that our index of gender culture based on firms'
attitudes is significant in explaining gender gap in employment in Italian
provinces. We show that the same holds when culture is measured with
reference to individual attitudes.

Keywords: Firm's culture, Italian provinces, instrumental variable

JEL Classification: JI6

Dowload PDF paper