Javier Polavieja
Biographic Data
| ID | 332829 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Javier Polavieja |
| GIVEN NAMES | Javier |
| FAMILY NAME | Polavieja |
| SIGNATURE | POLAVIEJA J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Universidad Carlos III de Madrid |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4079-9913 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 323 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Rental housing discrimination against Chinese minorities in Spain: A new instant messaging correspondence test
Research on rental housing discrimination (RHD) against migrant minorities has overwhelmingly focused on the first generation, paying special attention to the most sizeable immigrant groups. As a result, we still know little about the housing-market experiences of immigrants’ children and the less sizeable—but often fast-growing—ethnic minorities. RHD research has also lagged behind the spectacular growth of online apps for conducting private ren…
Por qué es tan alta la tasa de empleo temporal? España en perspectiva comparada
En este trabajo se realiza un análisis empírico comparado y multivariante con datos macro y micro de la incidencia del empleo temporal en 15 países de la OCDE a partir de datos de la propia OCDE, de EUROSTAT y de la octave ola del Panel de Hogares Europeos. Los resultados de este análisis permiten concluir que, contrariamente a lo que sostiene una buena parte de la literatura sociológica, la estructura productiva no es el principal factor explica…
In your face: A comparative field experiment on racial discrimination in Europe
We present the first large-scale comparative field experiment on appearance-based racial discrimination in hiring conducted in Europe. Using a harmonized methodology, we sent fictitious résumés to real vacancies in Germany, the Netherlands and Spain, randomly varying applicants’ ethnic ancestry (signaled foremost by name) and applicants’ racial appearance (signaled by photographs). Applicants are young-adult country nationals born to parents from…
Which Integration Policies Work? The Heterogeneous Impact of National Institutions on Immigrants’ Labor Market Attainment in Europe
Can specific policies support the economic integration of immigrants? Despite the crucial importance of this question, existing evidence is inconclusive. Using data from the European Social Survey, we estimate the effects of integration and anti-discrimination policies, alongside social expenditure and labor market regulation, on the labor market performance of 6,176 non-European immigrants across 23 European countries. We make three contribution…
The boundary within: Are applicants of Southern European descent discriminated against in Northern European job markets
In the aftermath of the Euro debt crisis, negative stereotypes about Southern Europeans were (re)activated across Northern European countries. Because these stereotypes make explicit reference to productivity-relevant traits, they have the potential to influence employers’ hiring decisions. We draw on a sub-sample of the Growth, Equal Opportunities, Migration and Markets discrimination study (GEMM) to investigate the responses of over 3500 firms …
Ancestry Culture, Assimilation, and Voter Turnout in Two Generations
Women vote less than men in many parts of the world. Whether this gender gap is due to cultural preferences stemming from traditional gender norms or to structural constraints is hard to answer because preferences and beliefs are endogenous to the socioeconomic and institutional environment. To address this problem, we use the so-called epidemiological approach. This approach exploits the portability of culture as a source of identification, by c…
Gender Discrimination in Hiring: Evidence from a Cross-National Harmonized Field Experiment
Gender discrimination is often regarded as an important driver of women's disadvantage in the labour market, yet earlier studies show mixed results. However, because different studies employ different research designs, the estimates of discrimination cannot be compared across countries. By utilizing data from the first harmonized comparative field experiment on gender discrimination in hiring in six countries, we can directly compare employers' c…
Grandes Datos, Grandes Sesgos, Grandes Errores: Sobre el Atlas de Oportunidades
El Atlas de Oportunidades, impulsado por las fundaciones Felipe González y Cotec, ha sido recientemente presentado por sus autores como una herramienta única para estudiar la movilidad social en España. En este trabajo sostengo que el Atlas es, en realidad, una mala herramienta para el estudio de la movilidad social, tanto por razones conceptuales como, sobre todo, por razones metodológicas. El Atlas es una herramienta conceptualmente limitada po…
Are Migrants Selected on Motivational Orientations? Selectivity Patterns amongst International Migrants in Europe
Migration scholars often assume migrants are the most ambitious and motivated individuals of their home countries. Yet research on motivational selectivity is scant. We present the first systematic cross-national analysis of migrants' selectivity on achievement-related motivational orientations (ARMOs). We measure ARMOs using a validated scale that combines orientations towards socio-economic success, risk, and money. Matching the European Social…
Immigrants against immigration: Competition, identity and immigrants' vote on free movement in Switzerland
Culture as a Random Treatment: A Reply to Chou
In a 2015 ASR article, I introduced SISTER, a new method to estimate the causal effects of culture using migrant populations. Chou raises significant concerns about SISTER and concludes that the method is flawed. I contend that this conclusion is incorrect because it is based on a mischaracterization of the method's identification assumptions. Specifically, Chou disregards that SISTER exploits cultural variation across multiple countries of origi…
Labour-market competition, recession and anti-immigrant sentiments in Europe: Occupational and environmental drivers of competitive threat
Research on attitudes towards immigration has overemphasized the subjective dimension of threat, while the objective bases of native-immigrant competition remained largely under-studied. I investigate the impact of both occupational and environmental sources of economic competition on attitudes towards immigration in Europe. Drawing on social stratification and labour economics theory, I discuss three dimensions of the occupation affecting exposu…
Saying and Doing Gender: Intergenerational Transmission of Attitudes towards the Sexual Division of Labour
The persistence of gender inequalities in the division of paid and unpaid work poses an important question for gender socialization research: what matters most for the intergenerational transmission of gender-role attitudes, parental own attitudes, or parental behaviours? Recent explanations in cultural economics suggest that intentional attitudinal transmission is the main driver of cultural reproduction. In line with classical sex-role learning…
Capturing Culture: A New Method to Estimate Exogenous Cultural Effects Using Migrant Populations
We know that culture influences people's behavior. Yet estimating the exact extent of this influence poses a formidable methodological challenge for the social sciences. This is because preferences and beliefs are endogenous, that is, they are shaped by individuals' own experiences and affected by the same macro-structural conditions that constrain their actions. This study introduces a new method to overcome endogeneity problems in the estimatio…
Nurse or Mechanic? The Role of Parental Socialization and Children's Personality in the Formation of Sex-Typed Occupational Aspirations
Boys and girls with sex-typical aspirations are significantly more likely to end up in sex-typical jobs as adults. Preference formation among children is therefore relevan for subsequent occupational outcomes. This study investigates the role of parental socialization and children's agency in the formation of sex-typed preferences using data for British children aged 11 to 15. We anchor agency in observable psychological attributes associated wit…
Socially Embedded Investments: Explaining Gender Differences in Job-Specific Skills
This article offers an innovative explanation for gender differences in job specialization that connects individual choices to the social structure. Decisions about jobs are modeled as a choice over different tenure-reward slopes, which are steeper for more specialized skills. The choice of job depends on expected duration. Individuals have imperfect information about their probability of success in different jobs and form expectations partly by …
Immigrants in Denmark: Access to Employment, Class Attainment and Earnings in a High‐Skilled Economy
This study examines employment access, class attainment, and earnings among native‐born and first‐generation immigrants in Denmark using Danish administrative data from 2002. Results suggest large gaps in employment access between native‐born Danes and immigrants, as well as among immigrant groups by country of origin and time of arrival. Non‐Western immigrants and those arriving after 1984 are at a particular disadvantage compared to other immig…
Domestic Supply, Job-Specialization and Sex-differences in Pay
The Effect of Occupational Sex-Composition on Earnings: Job-Specialization, Sex-Role Attitudes and the Division of Domestic Labour in Spain
Important theoretical controversies remain unresolved in the literature on occupational sex-segregation and the gender wage gap. These controversies can be summarized as a debate between cultural-socialization arguments and economic or rational-action theories of specialization. The article discusses these theories in detail and carries out a preliminary test of the relative explanatory performance of some of their most consequential predictions.…
Por qué es tan alta la tasa de empleo temporal? España en perspectiva comparada (Why Is the Rate of Temporary Employment so High? Spain in a Comparative Context)
This study analyses the determinants of the rate of temporary employment in 15 OECD countries using both macro-level data drawn from the OECD and EUROSTAT databases, as well as micro-level data drawn from the 8th wave of the European Household Panel. The analysis shows that, contrary to the view held by a large part of the sociological literature, the high leveis of temporary employment observed in Spain cannot be explained by the characteristics…
The Incidence of Temporary Employment in Advanced Economies: Why is Spain Different
This study analyses the determinants of the rate of temporary employment in 15 advanced economies using both macro-level data drawn from the OECD and EUROSTAT databases, as well as micro-level data drawn from the eighth wave of the European Household Panel. Comparative analysis is set out to test different explanations originally formulated for the Spanish case. The evidence suggests that the overall distribution of temporary employment in the an…
Desregulación parcial y desigualdad horizontal en España
En este artículo se explica cómo y por qué la política de desregulación laboral inaugurada en 1984 generó importantes desigualdades entre trabajadores de productividad equiparable. Para ello, se revisan los datos empíricos existentes sobre la distribución de oportunidades laborales entre 1984 y 1997, periodo en el que se consolida en España un mercado de estables y precarios. Dichos datos se complementan con nuevos análisis basados en la versión …
Flexibility or polarization? Temporary employment and job tasks in Spain
The paper takes issue with demand-based interpretations of the consequences of deregulation through temporary employment in Spain. According to demand-based accounts, the introduction of temporary contracts has helped to generate and maintain a secondary segment in the Spanish labour market, in which specific product market conditions generate a need for highly flexible contracts to perform low-skilled tasks. In contrast to this view, the paper a…
Task Specificity and the Gender Wage Gap
Standard research on the wage gap tends to take, often implicitly, an individual human capital approach. As a result, the specificity of the tasks people are employed to perform is rarely incorporated in the analyses, and this is bound to yield mis-specified wage equations. Incorporating task-specificity factors in the wage models can advance our understanding of the mechanisms behind wage differences by sex. Decomposing the taskspecificity model…
Temporary Contracts and Labour Market Segmentation in Spain: An Employment-Rent Approach
Deregulation through temporary employment has generated important inequalities in the Spanish labour market. The article presents a theoretical model as well as empirical evidence to explain this process. The main thrust of the model is seeing labour market structures as always being the result of micro-level strategies of employers and employees over employment rents. The employment-rent approach focuses on the impact of deregulation through tem…
Capturing Culture: A New Method to Estimate Exogenous Cultural Effects Using Migrant Populations
We know that culture influences people's behavior. Yet estimating the exact extent of this influence poses a formidable methodological challenge for the social sciences. This is because preferences and beliefs are endogenous, that is, they are shaped by individuals' own experiences and affected by the same macro-structural conditions that constrain their actions. This study introduces a new method to overcome endogeneity problems in the estimatio…
Temporary Contracts and Labour Market Segmentation in Spain: An Employment-Rent Approach
Deregulation through temporary employment has generated important inequalities in the Spanish labour market. The article presents a theoretical model as well as empirical evidence to explain this process. The main thrust of the model is seeing labour market structures as always being the result of micro-level strategies of employers and employees over employment rents. The employment-rent approach focuses on the impact of deregulation through tem…
Saying and Doing Gender: Intergenerational Transmission of Attitudes towards the Sexual Division of Labour
The persistence of gender inequalities in the division of paid and unpaid work poses an important question for gender socialization research: what matters most for the intergenerational transmission of gender-role attitudes, parental own attitudes, or parental behaviours? Recent explanations in cultural economics suggest that intentional attitudinal transmission is the main driver of cultural reproduction. In line with classical sex-role learning…
The Incidence of Temporary Employment in Advanced Economies: Why is Spain Different
This study analyses the determinants of the rate of temporary employment in 15 advanced economies using both macro-level data drawn from the OECD and EUROSTAT databases, as well as micro-level data drawn from the eighth wave of the European Household Panel. Comparative analysis is set out to test different explanations originally formulated for the Spanish case. The evidence suggests that the overall distribution of temporary employment in the an…
Are Migrants Selected on Motivational Orientations? Selectivity Patterns amongst International Migrants in Europe
Migration scholars often assume migrants are the most ambitious and motivated individuals of their home countries. Yet research on motivational selectivity is scant. We present the first systematic cross-national analysis of migrants' selectivity on achievement-related motivational orientations (ARMOs). We measure ARMOs using a validated scale that combines orientations towards socio-economic success, risk, and money. Matching the European Social…
Immigrants against immigration: Competition, identity and immigrants' vote on free movement in Switzerland
The Effect of Occupational Sex-Composition on Earnings: Job-Specialization, Sex-Role Attitudes and the Division of Domestic Labour in Spain
Important theoretical controversies remain unresolved in the literature on occupational sex-segregation and the gender wage gap. These controversies can be summarized as a debate between cultural-socialization arguments and economic or rational-action theories of specialization. The article discusses these theories in detail and carries out a preliminary test of the relative explanatory performance of some of their most consequential predictions.…
Flexibility or polarization? Temporary employment and job tasks in Spain
The paper takes issue with demand-based interpretations of the consequences of deregulation through temporary employment in Spain. According to demand-based accounts, the introduction of temporary contracts has helped to generate and maintain a secondary segment in the Spanish labour market, in which specific product market conditions generate a need for highly flexible contracts to perform low-skilled tasks. In contrast to this view, the paper a…
Socially Embedded Investments: Explaining Gender Differences in Job-Specific Skills
This article offers an innovative explanation for gender differences in job specialization that connects individual choices to the social structure. Decisions about jobs are modeled as a choice over different tenure-reward slopes, which are steeper for more specialized skills. The choice of job depends on expected duration. Individuals have imperfect information about their probability of success in different jobs and form expectations partly by …
Which Integration Policies Work? The Heterogeneous Impact of National Institutions on Immigrants’ Labor Market Attainment in Europe
Can specific policies support the economic integration of immigrants? Despite the crucial importance of this question, existing evidence is inconclusive. Using data from the European Social Survey, we estimate the effects of integration and anti-discrimination policies, alongside social expenditure and labor market regulation, on the labor market performance of 6,176 non-European immigrants across 23 European countries. We make three contribution…
Immigrants in Denmark: Access to Employment, Class Attainment and Earnings in a High‐Skilled Economy
This study examines employment access, class attainment, and earnings among native‐born and first‐generation immigrants in Denmark using Danish administrative data from 2002. Results suggest large gaps in employment access between native‐born Danes and immigrants, as well as among immigrant groups by country of origin and time of arrival. Non‐Western immigrants and those arriving after 1984 are at a particular disadvantage compared to other immig…
In your face: A comparative field experiment on racial discrimination in Europe
We present the first large-scale comparative field experiment on appearance-based racial discrimination in hiring conducted in Europe. Using a harmonized methodology, we sent fictitious résumés to real vacancies in Germany, the Netherlands and Spain, randomly varying applicants’ ethnic ancestry (signaled foremost by name) and applicants’ racial appearance (signaled by photographs). Applicants are young-adult country nationals born to parents from…
Gender Discrimination in Hiring: Evidence from a Cross-National Harmonized Field Experiment
Gender discrimination is often regarded as an important driver of women's disadvantage in the labour market, yet earlier studies show mixed results. However, because different studies employ different research designs, the estimates of discrimination cannot be compared across countries. By utilizing data from the first harmonized comparative field experiment on gender discrimination in hiring in six countries, we can directly compare employers' c…
Labour-market competition, recession and anti-immigrant sentiments in Europe: Occupational and environmental drivers of competitive threat
Research on attitudes towards immigration has overemphasized the subjective dimension of threat, while the objective bases of native-immigrant competition remained largely under-studied. I investigate the impact of both occupational and environmental sources of economic competition on attitudes towards immigration in Europe. Drawing on social stratification and labour economics theory, I discuss three dimensions of the occupation affecting exposu…
Task Specificity and the Gender Wage Gap
Standard research on the wage gap tends to take, often implicitly, an individual human capital approach. As a result, the specificity of the tasks people are employed to perform is rarely incorporated in the analyses, and this is bound to yield mis-specified wage equations. Incorporating task-specificity factors in the wage models can advance our understanding of the mechanisms behind wage differences by sex. Decomposing the taskspecificity model…
Ancestry Culture, Assimilation, and Voter Turnout in Two Generations
Women vote less than men in many parts of the world. Whether this gender gap is due to cultural preferences stemming from traditional gender norms or to structural constraints is hard to answer because preferences and beliefs are endogenous to the socioeconomic and institutional environment. To address this problem, we use the so-called epidemiological approach. This approach exploits the portability of culture as a source of identification, by c…
Culture as a Random Treatment: A Reply to Chou
In a 2015 ASR article, I introduced SISTER, a new method to estimate the causal effects of culture using migrant populations. Chou raises significant concerns about SISTER and concludes that the method is flawed. I contend that this conclusion is incorrect because it is based on a mischaracterization of the method's identification assumptions. Specifically, Chou disregards that SISTER exploits cultural variation across multiple countries of origi…
The boundary within: Are applicants of Southern European descent discriminated against in Northern European job markets
In the aftermath of the Euro debt crisis, negative stereotypes about Southern Europeans were (re)activated across Northern European countries. Because these stereotypes make explicit reference to productivity-relevant traits, they have the potential to influence employers’ hiring decisions. We draw on a sub-sample of the Growth, Equal Opportunities, Migration and Markets discrimination study (GEMM) to investigate the responses of over 3500 firms …
Domestic Supply, Job-Specialization and Sex-differences in Pay
Desregulación parcial y desigualdad horizontal en España
En este artículo se explica cómo y por qué la política de desregulación laboral inaugurada en 1984 generó importantes desigualdades entre trabajadores de productividad equiparable. Para ello, se revisan los datos empíricos existentes sobre la distribución de oportunidades laborales entre 1984 y 1997, periodo en el que se consolida en España un mercado de estables y precarios. Dichos datos se complementan con nuevos análisis basados en la versión …
Por qué es tan alta la tasa de empleo temporal? España en perspectiva comparada
En este trabajo se realiza un análisis empírico comparado y multivariante con datos macro y micro de la incidencia del empleo temporal en 15 países de la OCDE a partir de datos de la propia OCDE, de EUROSTAT y de la octave ola del Panel de Hogares Europeos. Los resultados de este análisis permiten concluir que, contrariamente a lo que sostiene una buena parte de la literatura sociológica, la estructura productiva no es el principal factor explica…
Grandes Datos, Grandes Sesgos, Grandes Errores: Sobre el Atlas de Oportunidades
El Atlas de Oportunidades, impulsado por las fundaciones Felipe González y Cotec, ha sido recientemente presentado por sus autores como una herramienta única para estudiar la movilidad social en España. En este trabajo sostengo que el Atlas es, en realidad, una mala herramienta para el estudio de la movilidad social, tanto por razones conceptuales como, sobre todo, por razones metodológicas. El Atlas es una herramienta conceptualmente limitada po…
Por qué es tan alta la tasa de empleo temporal? España en perspectiva comparada (Why Is the Rate of Temporary Employment so High? Spain in a Comparative Context)
This study analyses the determinants of the rate of temporary employment in 15 OECD countries using both macro-level data drawn from the OECD and EUROSTAT databases, as well as micro-level data drawn from the 8th wave of the European Household Panel. The analysis shows that, contrary to the view held by a large part of the sociological literature, the high leveis of temporary employment observed in Spain cannot be explained by the characteristics…
Temporary Contracts and Labour Market Segmentation in Spain: An Employment-Rent Approach
Deregulation through temporary employment has generated important inequalities in the Spanish labour market. The article presents a theoretical model as well as empirical evidence to explain this process. The main thrust of the model is seeing labour market structures as always being the result of micro-level strategies of employers and employees over employment rents. The employment-rent approach focuses on the impact of deregulation through tem…
Desregulación parcial y desigualdad horizontal en España
En este artículo se explica cómo y por qué la política de desregulación laboral inaugurada en 1984 generó importantes desigualdades entre trabajadores de productividad equiparable. Para ello, se revisan los datos empíricos existentes sobre la distribución de oportunidades laborales entre 1984 y 1997, periodo en el que se consolida en España un mercado de estables y precarios. Dichos datos se complementan con nuevos análisis basados en la versión …
Flexibility or polarization? Temporary employment and job tasks in Spain
The paper takes issue with demand-based interpretations of the consequences of deregulation through temporary employment in Spain. According to demand-based accounts, the introduction of temporary contracts has helped to generate and maintain a secondary segment in the Spanish labour market, in which specific product market conditions generate a need for highly flexible contracts to perform low-skilled tasks. In contrast to this view, the paper a…
Task Specificity and the Gender Wage Gap
Standard research on the wage gap tends to take, often implicitly, an individual human capital approach. As a result, the specificity of the tasks people are employed to perform is rarely incorporated in the analyses, and this is bound to yield mis-specified wage equations. Incorporating task-specificity factors in the wage models can advance our understanding of the mechanisms behind wage differences by sex. Decomposing the taskspecificity model…
Por qué es tan alta la tasa de empleo temporal? España en perspectiva comparada (Why Is the Rate of Temporary Employment so High? Spain in a Comparative Context)
This study analyses the determinants of the rate of temporary employment in 15 OECD countries using both macro-level data drawn from the OECD and EUROSTAT databases, as well as micro-level data drawn from the 8th wave of the European Household Panel. The analysis shows that, contrary to the view held by a large part of the sociological literature, the high leveis of temporary employment observed in Spain cannot be explained by the characteristics…
The Incidence of Temporary Employment in Advanced Economies: Why is Spain Different
This study analyses the determinants of the rate of temporary employment in 15 advanced economies using both macro-level data drawn from the OECD and EUROSTAT databases, as well as micro-level data drawn from the eighth wave of the European Household Panel. Comparative analysis is set out to test different explanations originally formulated for the Spanish case. The evidence suggests that the overall distribution of temporary employment in the an…
The Effect of Occupational Sex-Composition on Earnings: Job-Specialization, Sex-Role Attitudes and the Division of Domestic Labour in Spain
Important theoretical controversies remain unresolved in the literature on occupational sex-segregation and the gender wage gap. These controversies can be summarized as a debate between cultural-socialization arguments and economic or rational-action theories of specialization. The article discusses these theories in detail and carries out a preliminary test of the relative explanatory performance of some of their most consequential predictions.…
Domestic Supply, Job-Specialization and Sex-differences in Pay
Immigrants in Denmark: Access to Employment, Class Attainment and Earnings in a High‐Skilled Economy
This study examines employment access, class attainment, and earnings among native‐born and first‐generation immigrants in Denmark using Danish administrative data from 2002. Results suggest large gaps in employment access between native‐born Danes and immigrants, as well as among immigrant groups by country of origin and time of arrival. Non‐Western immigrants and those arriving after 1984 are at a particular disadvantage compared to other immig…
Socially Embedded Investments: Explaining Gender Differences in Job-Specific Skills
This article offers an innovative explanation for gender differences in job specialization that connects individual choices to the social structure. Decisions about jobs are modeled as a choice over different tenure-reward slopes, which are steeper for more specialized skills. The choice of job depends on expected duration. Individuals have imperfect information about their probability of success in different jobs and form expectations partly by …
Nurse or Mechanic? The Role of Parental Socialization and Children's Personality in the Formation of Sex-Typed Occupational Aspirations
Boys and girls with sex-typical aspirations are significantly more likely to end up in sex-typical jobs as adults. Preference formation among children is therefore relevan for subsequent occupational outcomes. This study investigates the role of parental socialization and children's agency in the formation of sex-typed preferences using data for British children aged 11 to 15. We anchor agency in observable psychological attributes associated wit…
Capturing Culture: A New Method to Estimate Exogenous Cultural Effects Using Migrant Populations
We know that culture influences people's behavior. Yet estimating the exact extent of this influence poses a formidable methodological challenge for the social sciences. This is because preferences and beliefs are endogenous, that is, they are shaped by individuals' own experiences and affected by the same macro-structural conditions that constrain their actions. This study introduces a new method to overcome endogeneity problems in the estimatio…
Labour-market competition, recession and anti-immigrant sentiments in Europe: Occupational and environmental drivers of competitive threat
Research on attitudes towards immigration has overemphasized the subjective dimension of threat, while the objective bases of native-immigrant competition remained largely under-studied. I investigate the impact of both occupational and environmental sources of economic competition on attitudes towards immigration in Europe. Drawing on social stratification and labour economics theory, I discuss three dimensions of the occupation affecting exposu…
Saying and Doing Gender: Intergenerational Transmission of Attitudes towards the Sexual Division of Labour
The persistence of gender inequalities in the division of paid and unpaid work poses an important question for gender socialization research: what matters most for the intergenerational transmission of gender-role attitudes, parental own attitudes, or parental behaviours? Recent explanations in cultural economics suggest that intentional attitudinal transmission is the main driver of cultural reproduction. In line with classical sex-role learning…
Culture as a Random Treatment: A Reply to Chou
In a 2015 ASR article, I introduced SISTER, a new method to estimate the causal effects of culture using migrant populations. Chou raises significant concerns about SISTER and concludes that the method is flawed. I contend that this conclusion is incorrect because it is based on a mischaracterization of the method's identification assumptions. Specifically, Chou disregards that SISTER exploits cultural variation across multiple countries of origi…
Are Migrants Selected on Motivational Orientations? Selectivity Patterns amongst International Migrants in Europe
Migration scholars often assume migrants are the most ambitious and motivated individuals of their home countries. Yet research on motivational selectivity is scant. We present the first systematic cross-national analysis of migrants' selectivity on achievement-related motivational orientations (ARMOs). We measure ARMOs using a validated scale that combines orientations towards socio-economic success, risk, and money. Matching the European Social…
Immigrants against immigration: Competition, identity and immigrants' vote on free movement in Switzerland
Grandes Datos, Grandes Sesgos, Grandes Errores: Sobre el Atlas de Oportunidades
El Atlas de Oportunidades, impulsado por las fundaciones Felipe González y Cotec, ha sido recientemente presentado por sus autores como una herramienta única para estudiar la movilidad social en España. En este trabajo sostengo que el Atlas es, en realidad, una mala herramienta para el estudio de la movilidad social, tanto por razones conceptuales como, sobre todo, por razones metodológicas. El Atlas es una herramienta conceptualmente limitada po…
Which Integration Policies Work? The Heterogeneous Impact of National Institutions on Immigrants’ Labor Market Attainment in Europe
Can specific policies support the economic integration of immigrants? Despite the crucial importance of this question, existing evidence is inconclusive. Using data from the European Social Survey, we estimate the effects of integration and anti-discrimination policies, alongside social expenditure and labor market regulation, on the labor market performance of 6,176 non-European immigrants across 23 European countries. We make three contribution…
The boundary within: Are applicants of Southern European descent discriminated against in Northern European job markets
In the aftermath of the Euro debt crisis, negative stereotypes about Southern Europeans were (re)activated across Northern European countries. Because these stereotypes make explicit reference to productivity-relevant traits, they have the potential to influence employers’ hiring decisions. We draw on a sub-sample of the Growth, Equal Opportunities, Migration and Markets discrimination study (GEMM) to investigate the responses of over 3500 firms …
Ancestry Culture, Assimilation, and Voter Turnout in Two Generations
Women vote less than men in many parts of the world. Whether this gender gap is due to cultural preferences stemming from traditional gender norms or to structural constraints is hard to answer because preferences and beliefs are endogenous to the socioeconomic and institutional environment. To address this problem, we use the so-called epidemiological approach. This approach exploits the portability of culture as a source of identification, by c…
Gender Discrimination in Hiring: Evidence from a Cross-National Harmonized Field Experiment
Gender discrimination is often regarded as an important driver of women's disadvantage in the labour market, yet earlier studies show mixed results. However, because different studies employ different research designs, the estimates of discrimination cannot be compared across countries. By utilizing data from the first harmonized comparative field experiment on gender discrimination in hiring in six countries, we can directly compare employers' c…
In your face: A comparative field experiment on racial discrimination in Europe
We present the first large-scale comparative field experiment on appearance-based racial discrimination in hiring conducted in Europe. Using a harmonized methodology, we sent fictitious résumés to real vacancies in Germany, the Netherlands and Spain, randomly varying applicants’ ethnic ancestry (signaled foremost by name) and applicants’ racial appearance (signaled by photographs). Applicants are young-adult country nationals born to parents from…
Por qué es tan alta la tasa de empleo temporal? España en perspectiva comparada
En este trabajo se realiza un análisis empírico comparado y multivariante con datos macro y micro de la incidencia del empleo temporal en 15 países de la OCDE a partir de datos de la propia OCDE, de EUROSTAT y de la octave ola del Panel de Hogares Europeos. Los resultados de este análisis permiten concluir que, contrariamente a lo que sostiene una buena parte de la literatura sociológica, la estructura productiva no es el principal factor explica…
Rental housing discrimination against Chinese minorities in Spain: A new instant messaging correspondence test
Research on rental housing discrimination (RHD) against migrant minorities has overwhelmingly focused on the first generation, paying special attention to the most sizeable immigrant groups. As a result, we still know little about the housing-market experiences of immigrants’ children and the less sizeable—but often fast-growing—ethnic minorities. RHD research has also lagged behind the spectacular growth of online apps for conducting private ren…
Economics (20 works) · Political science (15 works) · Demographic economics (14 works) · Labor market dynamics and wage inequality (13 works) · Labour economics (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Economic growth (6 works) · Employment and Welfare Studies (6 works) · Immigration (6 works)