We study how foreign firms strategically adapt to their local environment and make hiring decisions in a host country with differing deep-seated cultural norms. Using unique employer-employee matched data of the private sector in Saudi Arabia, we find that foreign firms hire a larger share of...

Through the custom of guardianship, husbands typically have the final word on their wives' labor supply decisions in Saudi Arabia, a country with very low female labor force participation (FLFP). We provide incentivized evidence (both from an experimental sample in Riyadh and from a national...