Gabriele Ruiu

Culturally-Based Beliefs and Labour Market Institutions

This paper has two main goals. The first is to provide empirical evidence that differences in labour market institutions across countries and, specifically, in how they provide protection to workers, can be attributed to underlying differences in culturally-based prior beliefs: in particular, people’s fatalism and trust in others. The second goal is to single out the socio-economic factors associated with these beliefs and the role of education in this regard.

The relationship between family characteristics and height in Sardinia at the turn of the twentieth century

Abstract This paper is intended as a contribution to the debate on the determinants of physical stature in the past and it specifically investigates whether, in Sardinia, height − considered as a proxy of the share of household resources allocated to a child’s growth − was influenced by the number of brothers and sisters amongst whom parents had to distribute available resources. This study is limited to the male population, because military records represent the only source at our disposal providing historical data on height. The community studied is the town of Alghero, located on the north-western coast of Sardinia, at the turn of the twentieth century. We have adopted a longitudinal approach, thanks to the rich dataset reconstructed for Alghero, using different sources including family, socioeconomic and anthropometric indicators. The results, in line with the resource dilution hypothesis, show that competition within the household was of some importance and that the effects on height due to scarcity of resources were particularly evident amongst farmers, the most representative socioeconomic status group in Alghero. A significant contribution to the stature reached in adulthood was also given by the socioeconomic status of the family or else by other individual characteristics.

THE ORIGIN OF FATALISTIC TENDENCIES: AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION

We maintain that fatalistic tendencies are the output of the interaction between cultural factors (and in particular of religion) and historical institutional experiences. This idea has been empirically tested using World Value Survey data. We find that a more regulated society tends to be also more fatalistic. At the same time, also religious beliefs and their interactions with the institutional framework seem to be an important element determining fatalistic tendencies. For what regards the direct effect of religious affiliation on fatalism, we find that there are not large differences across the various faiths. In other terms, being religious independently from the religious affiliation implies a more fatalistic view of life.