Job protection: the Macho Hypothesis?

Yann Algan (1) , Pierre Cahuc (2)

1 ECON - Département d'économie (Sciences Po)
2 X-DEP-ECO - Département d'Économie de l'École Polytechnique

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.

Keywords: job protection; political economy; religion

Domains: Economics and Finance

Yann Algan, Pierre Cahuc. Job protection: the Macho Hypothesis?. 2004. ⟨hal-01065504⟩