OECD countries faced largely divergent employment rates during the last decades. But the whole bulk of the cross-national and cross-temporal heterogeneity relies on specific demographic groups: prime-age women and younger and older individuals. This paper argues that family labor supply...

This paper provides unprecedented direct evidence from large-scale survey data on both the intensity (how much?) and direction (to whom?) of income comparisons. Income comparisons are considered to be at least somewhat important by three-quarters of Europeans. They are associated with both lower...

This paper documents assimilation of immigrants in European destinations along cultural, civic, and economic dimensions, distinguishing by immigrants' generation, duration of stay, and origin. Based on the European Social Survey, it suggests that assimilation may have multiple facets, and take...

We introduce the notion of language disenfranchisement which arises if the number of EU working languages is reduced. We use the data on language proficiency in EU and show that, in spite of the widespread knowledge of English, the retention of French and German as working languages in essential...

In this paper we study the determinants of citizens' trust in the European Central Bank during the start-up phase from 1999-2004. Using a country panel based on the Eurobarometer survey, we find that higher inflation rates reduce trust. Thus people appear to evaluate the performance of the ECB...

The paper aims at investigating the linkages between civic awareness and subjective well-being in EU countries by using ESS (European Social Survey) 2006 data. In our analysis, civic awareness is measured using an original empirical approach based on factor analysis and the aggregation of a wide...

This chapter investigates the integration processes of immigrants in Germany by comparing certain immigrant groups to natives differentiating by gender and immigrant generation. Indicators which are supposed to capture cultural integration of immigrants are differences in marital behavior as...

This paper examines the role of herd behavior (mimetism) and network effects as determinants of bilateral migration flows to thirteen of the EU-15 countries. Using an adapted gravity model controlling for economic activity, welfare progressivity, geospatial, and historic relationships, the...

The labor market is both a market and a "social institution". But what do we mean by that? In the first part of this article we analyze different interpretations of the labor market's "social" dimension, starting with the versions postulated by economists and ending with those that invoke...