Legal origins, interpreted as "highly persistent systems of social control of economic life" have large economic consequences (La Porta, de Silanes, and Shleifer, 2008). This paper examines whether social outcomes (female education and labor participation in particular) are also influenced by the origin of legal institutions. I use two data sources (and time periods) and two measures of education to verify the suspected link between female labor market participation, education and legal origins. Controlling for average GDP in the last 10 years, barriers to starting a business, corruption, public spending on health and distinct measures of cultural attitudes to women, I find that women tend to participate in the labor market at significantly lower rates in countries with English and French legal origins and at higher rates in countries with the legal system of German origin (although this effect is generally not significant). Girls are more likely to finish primary education in German legal origin countries (and less likely in countries with the English legal origin). Female-to-male literacy ratios are lower in countries where abuse of women is widespread but I find that legal origins are poor predictors of the prevalence of abuse.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by University Library of Munich, Germany in its series MPRA Paper with number
13659.
Find related papers by JEL classification: O10 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - General K00 - Law and Economics - - General - - - General (including Data Sources and Description) J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
RAFAEL LaPORTA & FLORENCIO LOPEZ-de-SILANES & ANDREI SHLEIFER & ROBERT W. VISHNY, .
"Legal Determinants of External Finance,","
CRSP working papers
324, Center for Research in Security Prices, Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago.
La Porta, Rafael & Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes & Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 1997.
" Legal Determinants of External Finance,"
Journal of Finance,
American Finance Association, vol. 52(3), pages 1131-50, July.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)