Using data on name distributions in 95 French departments observed from 1946 to 2002, we investigate spatial and social mechanisms behind the transmission of parental preferences. Drawing inspiration from recent work on social interactions, we develop a simple discrete choice model that predicts...

We use life history data covering households in thirteen European countries to analyse residential moves past age 50. We observe four types of moves: renting to owning, owning to renting, trading up or trading down for home-owners. We find that in the younger group (aged 50-64) trading up and...

This paper aims at studying how economic incentives influence cultural transmission. We do so in the context of naming decisions, a crucial expression of cultural identity. Our focus is on Arabic versus Non-Arabic names given by parents to their newborn babies in France over the 2003-2007...

Married women's labour force participation has increased dramatically over the last century. Why this has occurred has been the subject of much debate. This paper investigates the role of culture as learning in this change. To do so, it develops a dynamic model of culture in which individuals...

Free trade in audio-visual services has faced opposition on the grounds that foreign media undermine domestic culture, and ultimately, global diversity. We assess the media-culture link using name frequencies as a measure of tastes. Using a 47-year panel of French birth registries, we first show...

Recently, economists have established that culture defined as a common set of preferences and beliefs—affects economic outcomes, including the levels of female labor force participation. Although this literature has argued that culture is transmitted from parents to children, it has also...

The Paper investigates the relationship of work and family life in Britain. Using hazard regression techniques we estimate a five-equation model, which includes birth events, union formation, union dissolution, employment and non-employment events. The model allows for unobserved heterogeneity...

The analysis uses a unique set of data matching mothers and their young adult children to study the impact of family background on young people’s educational attainments. The data is derived from the first five years (1991–5) of the British Household Panel Study. Mother’s education is...

This paper considers optimal educational investment and labour supply with increasing returns to scale in the earnings function In so doing we develop the work of Rosen (1983), who first highlighted the increasing returns argument that arises because private returns to human capital investment...

This Paper examines the process of development from an epoch of Malthusian stagnation to a state of sustained economic growth. The analysis focuses on recently advanced unified growth theories that capture the intricate evolution of income per capita, technology, and population over the course...