We study whether cultural attitudes towards gender, the young, and leisure are signi cantdeterminants of the evolution over time of the employment rates of women and of the young, andof hours worked in OECD countries. Beyond controlling for a larger menu of policies, institutionsand structural characteristics of the economy than has been done so far, our analysis improvesupon existing studies of the role of "culture" for labor market outcomes by dealing explicitlywith the endogeneity of attitudes, policies and institutions, and by allowing for the persistentnature of labor market outcomes. When we do all this we nd that culture still matters forwomen employment rates and for hours worked. However, policies and other institutional orstructural characteristics are also important. Attitudes towards youth independence, however,do not appear to be important in explaining the employment rate of the young. In the caseof women employment rates, the policy variable that is signi cant along with attitudes, is theOECD index of employment protection legislation. For hours worked the policy variablesthat play a role, along with attitudes, are the tax wedge and unemployment bene ts. Thequantitative impact of these policy variables (in particular, employment protection legislationand taxes) is large....
