Job protection: the Macho Hypothesis?

This paper shows that employment protection is influenced by the male breadwinner conception which is itself shaped by religions. First, by using international individual surveys, we document that Catholics, Muslims and Orthodoxs are more likely to support such "macho values" than Protestants and atheists. Second, we develop a model showing that such a macho bias yields support to job protection legislation. This prediction is strongly supported by OECD panel data regressions including country-fixed effects.