Amir Shoham

Do female/male distinctions in language matter? Evidence from gender political quotas

This article studies the determinants of gender political quota and enforcement sanctions, two key policy instruments for increasing female participation in politics. We find a novel empirical fact: language (the pervasiveness of gender distinctions in grammar) is the most significant related variable to quota adoption, more than traditional explanations such as economic development, political system and religion.

Does Mother Tongue Make for Women's Work? Linguistics, Household Labor, and Gender Identity

This paper studies the formation and persistence of gender identity in a sample of U.S. immigrants. We show that gender roles are acquired early in life, and once established, persist regardless of how long an individual has lived in the U.S. We use a novel approach relying on linguistic variation and document that households with individuals whose native language emphasizes gender in its grammatical structure are significantly more likely to allocate household tasks on the basis of sex and to do so more intensively. We present evidence of two mechanisms for our observed associations – that languages serve as cultural markers for origin country norms or that features of language directly influence cognition and behavior. Our findings do not appear to be driven by plausible alternatives such as selection in migration and marriage markets, as gender norms of behavior are evident even in the behavior of single person households.

China’s New Approach to ODI in Africa: A Model for a Government Seeking Natural Resources

The emergence of the Chinese economy, which has grown rapidly since the late 1970s, has increased the country’s demand for natural resources. China’s demand surplus for raw materials has made it increasingly dependent on the global supply of raw materials and energy (Cheng & Zihui, 2007). Throughout this period, policymakers in China’s central government understood the importance of being open to the global economy, first as receivers of inward foreign direct investment (FDI) and, more recently, also as a provider of outward direct investment (ODI). China is well known for its central planning and control in economic issues (Scott, 2002), especially of ODI. Although formal regulation of ODI has been eased since 2002 (Sauvant, 2005), China’s central government still maintains significant formal and informal control over the goals and amount of Chinese ODI (Buckley, et al., 2007). Cheng & Ma (2007) argue that the bulk of China’s FDI comes from the country’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs), in particular the large multinational companies that are administered by the Central Government’s ministries and agencies. The central government SOEs’ share of FDI flows in 2003–2005 were 73.5%, 82.3%, and 83.2%, respectively. Their shares of FDI stocks by the end of 2004 and 2005 were 85.5% and 83.7% respectively.

Push and pull factors in international franchising

Purpose Using munificence, real options and ambidexterity theories, the purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how the differential between home and host market environmental conditions affects US international franchising expansion. Design/methodology/approach The authors used firm-level panel data for 151 US-based franchising firms, from Bond’s Guide for Franchise Opportunities, for the years 1994-2008 plus macroeconomic data on the environment, to explain the probability of franchising. Findings The paper finds that the differential in economic growth and economic uncertainty impacts franchisors’ desire to expand abroad on a continual basis. Research limitations/implications Researchers in international franchising should not only focus on host market environmental variables (pull factors), but also on conditions in the home market (push factors). Originality/value The paper adds to environmental explanations of international franchising by focusing on the differential in munificence and uncertainty between home and host countries.

Decomposing Culture: An Analysis of Gender, Language, and Labor Supply in the Household

Language and Female Economic Participation Victor Gay, Daniel L. Hicks, Estefania Santacreu-Vasut, and Amir Shoham Abstract: This paper explores the relationship between the use of gender in language and the gender gap in economic participation. Using the American Community Survey, we show that among female migrants to the U.S., those who speak a language which makes sex-based grammatical gender distinctions exhibit lower labor force participation, hours worked, and weeks worked during the year, with larger effects for languages with more pervasive gender elements. To account for the impact of correlated origin country influences, we employ a fixed effects strategy and obtain identification off of variation in language spoken across immigrants from the same country. “In some languages gender is evident in almost every phrase, while in other languages it is absent” (Corbett, 2011). When present, genders provide a source of classification, allowing nouns to be assigned to groups. For instance, the Spanish sentence Ellos van a ver una película (They are going to a movie) contains multiple grammatical references to gender not present in all languages. While the noun película (movie) is not intrinsically male or female, here it is assigned a feminine article una. Similarly, the use of the masculine plural pronoun Ellos is directly related to biological sex – referring to a group including at least one male. Many languages, including English, lack systems such as gender assignment of nouns or gendered plural pronouns. These linguistic differences mean that some groups of individuals are forced to draw far more frequent gender distinctions in everyday conversation and in thought. This paper examines the hypothesis that speakers of highly gendered languages exhibit stronger gender-specific norms in their behavior. To accomplish this, we study the employment decisions of U.S. immigrants on the basis of sex and language spoken. Migrants face a similar economic environment which allows us to separate cultural influences acquired prior toDespite broad progress in closing many dimensions of the gender gap around the globe, recent research has shown that traditional gender roles can still exert a large influence on female labor force participation, even in developed economies. This paper empirically analyzes the role of culture in determining the labor market engagement of women within the context of collective models of household decision making. In particular, we use the epidemiological approach to study the relationship between gender in language and labor market participation among married female immigrants to the U.S. We show that the presence of gender in language can act as a marker for culturally acquired gender roles and that these roles are important determinants of household labor allocations. Female immigrants who speak a language with sex-based grammatical rules exhibit lower labor force participation, hours worked, and weeks worked. Our strategy of isolating one component of culture reveals that roughly two thirds of this relationship can be explained by correlated cultural factors, including the role of bargaining power in the household and the impact of ethnic enclaves, and that at most one third is potentially explained by language having a causal impact.

Linguistic gender marking gap and female staffing at MNC’s

This paper presents the impact of the linguistic gender marking gap on expatriate female staffing decisions in a multinational company. Transaction cost theory postulates that due to cultural differences, integration between parent and subsidiary companies becomes complex and costly. However, staffing from parent organisations could be helpful to minimise the cultural conflict by establishing better control and hence reducing the transaction cost. Language is considered as one of the major components that shapes culture, and linguistic gender marking gap could cause a difference in attitude towards male and female staff members from parent companies. Due to the nature of linguistic structures, which are embedded in ancestral culture and have a cognitive effect on speakers, the gap has two levels. The first is the gap between home and host countries’ languages. The second is between the official and informal languages used by the headquarters and the subsidiary. The analytical model, using an innovative gender gap variable, supports two carefully developed propositions, that the success of expatriate staffing at managerial level depends on the linguistic gender marking gap between home and host country, and that use of organisational language in subsidiaries reduces the linguistic gender marking gap between them.

The savings crisis and China's future growth

Purpose – It is very important to understand the current (2007‐2009) economic crisis because it is the most severe since the Second World War and is having a tremendous impact on global and national economic environments. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explain the main factors (savings attributes and cultural factors) that created the crisis and better understand which nations will gain in the post‐crisis era.Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses descriptive data to explore the global, Chinese and US economic environments prior to the economic crisis. In addition, the paper used an econometric model in order to evaluate the impact of cultural variables on savings behavior.Findings – The data lead us to one main conclusion: the crisis was created by major changes in global saving rates during the last two decades.Originality/value – The paper makes two major contributions: first it describes the opportunity that the current international crisis creates for China. The opportunity is an ou...

The Causal Impact of Grammatical Gender Marking on Gender Wage Inequality and Country Income Inequality

In this study, we investigate, both theoretically and empirically, the impact of language gender marking on gender wage inequality and country income inequality. We find that nations with a higher level of gender marking in their dominant language have a higher wage gap between genders. Using an instrumental variable approach, we also find that gender marking has an indirect impact on country income inequality via gender wage inequality. Furthermore, we find evidence that the income inequality of a society as a whole (Palma ratio and Gini index, interchangeably) is affected by gender wage inequality. Finally, we document that linguistic gender marking outperforms survey-based cultural gender dimensions as a predictor of both gender wage inequality and country income inequality.

The role of cultural attributes in savings rates

Purpose – The motivation for conducting this research came from the current global economic crisis. One outcome of the crisis is the awareness of the need for a better understanding of what causes people to save. Low savings rates in Western countries in general and in the USA in particular are the roots of the crisis. Furthermore, saving is probably one of the most important economic variables that impact the local and global environment. The current economic literature neglects the crucial impact that culture has on saving as a consequence we do not fully understand the causes of different saving rates in different societies. The purpose of this paper is to explore the variable of cultural attitudes as an explanation for variations in national savings rates.Design/methodology/approach – The phenomenon of diminishing personal savings cannot be explained simply by the variables studied in the current economic literature, such as interest rates, age of the population and wealth as expressed by GDP per capi...

The effects of societal culture attributes on regional disparity

Purpose - The main goal of this paper is to analyze the effects of societal culture attributes on regional disparity. Design/methodology/approach - This paper uses cross-country data to identify the variables that determine the regional disparity and the gap between the richest and poorest regions in the economy. Findings - The most interesting result of this study is that there exists a significant role played by societal cultural differences in the explanation of the regional disparity and the gap between rich and poor regions. Originality/value - As far as we know, this paper makes the first attempt to explain inter-regional disparity according to culture attributes. We estimate that cultural variables add about 5 percent to the explanation of the variation of the indices of inequality between regions.