We exploit migration patterns from the UK to Australia, South Africa, and the US to investigate whether a person's decision to smoke is determined by culture. For each country, we use retrospective data to describe individual smoking trajectories over the life-course. For the UK, we use these...

The paper aims at testing Florida's concept of the Creative Class using panel data for 323 West German regions for the time period 1975 - 2004. Applying a dynamic system approach based on GMM, we find that the local concentration of the Creative Class has predictive power for the economic...

This paper studies the effect of sharing a common native language on international trade. Switzerland hosts three major native language groups which adjoin countries sharing the same native majority languages. In regions close to the internal language border the alternate major language is...

The legal environment is one important determinant of corporate governance. However, within legal families, also cultural differences can explain the level of corporate governance to some extent. We analyze this relationship for the case of Switzerland. Swiss firms are mainly located in two...

There is an extensive literature examining the determinants of self-employment. These studies have mainly failed to account for the differences in entrepreneurial spirit across countries. This paper explores the role of culture in self-employment by exploiting variation in historical...

This paper studies the respective influences of intergenerational transmission and the environment in shaping individual trust. Focusing on second generation immigrants in Australia and the United States, we exploit the variation in the home country and in the host country to separate the effect...

Persistent differences in entrepreneurial activity between regions and countries remain unexplained. This paper argues that cultural heritage is an important determinant. We exploit a quasi-experimental setting comparing entrepreneurial activities of individuals with different cultural ancestry...

This paper asks to what extent life satisfaction among immigrants remains similar to that in their country of origin and to what extent it adapts to that in their country of residence. We employ data from 29,000 immigrants in the European Social Survey to estimate the relative importance of...

Optimal growth requires pro-growth institutions and culture. In an optimal growth pattern, institutions and culture facilitate entrepreneurship and innovation. In contrast, if the development and coevolution of institutions and culture are distorted, growth can become permanently stagnant, with...

The paper aims at testing Florida's concept of the Creative Class using panel data for 323 West German regions for the time period 1975-2004. We apply two different es-timation methods, a panel VAR for the complete data set and a dynamic system ap-proach based on GMM for a modified data set...