"Technological progress and globalization have generated indisputable benefits, but also relevant costs, such as growing economic inequality, economic fluctuations and financial instability. Mainstream economics has usually considered these costs as temporary, evenly distributed and more than...

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,...

The empirical evidence that unemployment is one of the most negative outcomes in life, carrying non-pecuniary psychic costs as well as pecuniary ones, is strong. Yet, standard explanations of the demand for social protection have neglected these costs and their impact on the way in which workers...

Radical differences in labour market regulations among countries that in other institutional respects are quite similar are still surprisingly frequent. Nonetheless, traditional theoretical analysis meets enormous difficulties in explaining these differences. The scope of our paper is to show...

This paper has two main goals. The first is to provide empirical evidence that differences in labor 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,...

Radical differences in labour market regulations among countries that in other institutional respects are quite similar are still surprisingly frequent. Nonetheless, traditional theoretical analysis meets enormous difficulties in explaining these differences. The scope of our paper is to show...