This report constitutes the first deliverable of the project ENGIME - Economic Growth and Innovation in Multicultural Environments, financed by the European Commission - FP5 - Key Action: Improving socio-economic knowledge base. Contract HPSE-CT2001-50007

We compare male and female behavior in Japan and Canada in the context of a threshold public goods game with both a strong free-riding equilibrium and many socially efficient threshold equilibria. Although higher rewards produce higher contributions, neither culture nor gender has any...

Using hand-collected data spanning more than a decade on European banks' sovereign debt portfolios, we show that the trust of residents of a bank's countries of operation in the residents of a potential target country of investment has a positive, statistically significant, and economically...

This paper examines the role of geography and culture in explaining bankruptcy. We adopt survival analyses to model the bankruptcy risk of a firm, allowing for time-varying covariates. Based on a large sample from all major sectors of the Swiss economy, we find the following results: (i) The...

Our paper explores the role of time preferences on household debt maturity choice. Wefind that in countries where people are more patient in the long term, planning horizons in householddebt portfolios are significantly longer, as the optimal maturity of loans is considerably higher.The...

This research enters new ground by presenting comparative survey evidence on assetmanagers' views and behavior in the United States, Germany, Japan and Thailand.Relying on Hofstede's four cultural dimensions, we find that cultural differencesare most helpful in understanding country differences...

This paper examines the role of geography and culture in explaining bankruptcy. We adopt survival analyses to model the bankruptcy risk of a firm, allowing for time-varying covariates. Based on a large sample from all major sectors of the Swiss economy, we find the following results: (i) The...

This paper reports the results of a cross-country comparison between Austria andJapan for an experimental 3-personcoalition formation ultimatum game. The experimental design allows thecomparison with respect to three decisions. (i)The coalition decision, (ii) proposers' demand behavior in 2- and...

This paper introduces cultural gravity as a new concept for analyzing socio-economic disparities among immigrants. It tests the existence of cultural gravity effects on the geographic concentration and human capital productivity of immigrants. Using cultural distance as a proxy for the local...