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Large variation exists in the frequency of informal childcare provided by grandparents across Europe. At the same time, a wide North-South divide characterizes European social policies. Do welfare policy arrangements shape the role of grandparents? If yes, to what extent do  grandparenting depend on the availability of public services offered for child care, parental leave regulation and legal obligations of family support? Combining micro-data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe and macro-indicators from the Multilinks database, this study aims to answer these questions and to further clarify the link between welfare provision and use of grandparents' resources for working mothers. By implementing country-specific regression models, we find a clear association between the policy context of the country of residence and (daily) grandparenting.

This paper studies whether firms trade political contributions for public procurement contracts. Combining data on Lithuanian government tenders, corporate donors and firm characteristics, I examine how a ban on corporate contributions affects the awarding of procurement contracts to companies that donated in the past. Consistent with political favoritism, donors’ probability of winning falls by five percentage points as compared to that of non-donor firms after the ban. Evidence on bidding and victory margins suggests that corporate donors may receive auction-relevant information affecting procurement outcomes in their favor. I assess that tax payers save almost one percent of GDP thanks to the reform.

Political disaffection has intensified in democratic societies and European countries have witnessed a slow but steady decline of political trust over the past decades. We argue that this is due to, in part, to sustained immigration and was exacerbated by the onset of the global financial crisis. To test this, we employ a multi-level research design using micro attitudinal data from 17 European countries (2002-14). Our findings show a strong connection between immigration to Europe and the growing distrust that European citizens have for their country’s political institutions. This study provides new insight into how trends in immigration and the economic conditions of the last decade have reshaped the relationship between citizens and politics in Europe. Finally, the future implications for sociological theorizing around political trust is discussed.

This paper investigates the extent to which attitudes are affected by political regimes and government policies. We focus on female attitudes toward work and gender-role attitudes in the population at large, which have been shown to have significant effects on labor market outcomes. We exploit the imposition of state-socialist regimes across Central and Eastern Europe, and their efforts to promote women’s economic inclusion, for both instrumental and ideological reasons, presenting evidence from two different datasets. First, we take advantage of the German partition into East and West after 1945 and unique access to restricted information on place of residence to implement a spatial regression discontinuity design. We find more positive attitudes toward work in the sample of East German women. We also find evidence that increased female access to higher education and fulltime employment, arguably two of the very few positive aspects of living under state-socialism, may have served as channels for regime influence. Second, we employ a difference-in-differences strategy that compares attitudes formed in Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) and Western European Countries (WECs), before and after the imposition of state socialism in CEECs. Gender-role attitudes formed in CEECs during the state socialist period appear to be significantly less traditional than those formed in WECs.

The discussion on the causes of the most recent fertility decline in Europe, and in particular on the emergence of lowest low fertility, emphasizes the relevance of cultural factors as compared to economic ones. Within such framework, the heterogeneity of preferences concerning the career vs. family dichotomy has been systematized in the Preference Theory approach developed by Catherine Hakim. This heterogeneity, however, has been so far underinvestigated in a comparative framework. This paper makes use of new comparative data from the 2004/05 Round of the European Social Survey to test the links between individual-level preferences and both fertility outcomes and fertility intentions, in a variety of societal settings. Results confirm an association between work-family lifestyle preferences and realized fertility in a variety of European countries, while they do not support the relevance of lifestyle preferences on fertility intentions.

Discrimination in access to public services can act as a major obstacle towards addressing racial inequality. We examine whether racial discrimination exists in access to a wide spectrum of public services in the US. We carry out an email correspondence study in which we pose simple queries to more than 19,000 local public service providers. We find that emails are less likely to receive a response if signed by a black-sounding name compared to a white-sounding name. Given a response rate of 72% for white senders, emails from putatively black senders are almost 4 percentage points less likely to receive an answer. We also find that responses to queries coming from black names are less likely to have a cordial tone. Further tests suggest that the differential in the likelihood of answering is due to animus towards blacks rather than inferring socioeconomic status from race.

In 2011, Italy introduced board gender quotas in listed companies. Comparing within firms before-after reform changes, we document that quotas are associated with a higher share of female board directors, with higher levels of education of board members and a lower share of elderly members. We then use the reform period as an instrument for the share of female directors and find no significant impact on firms’ performance. Interestingly, we find that the share of female directors is associated to a lower variability of stock market prices. We also run event studies on the stock price reaction to the introduction of gender quotas. A positive effect of the quota law on stock market returns emerges at the date of board’s election. Our results are consistent with gender quotas inducing a beneficial renovation of the board, which is positively received by the market.

Since the Soviet Union's collapse, Georgia has undergone profound socio-political and demographic changes. This paper examines recent fertility trends in Georgia using GGS data from 2006. Results show that the postponement of first birth does not significantly account for the decline in childbearing, suggesting that decline is primarily due to a reduction of second-order births. I then investigate determinants of intentions to have a second child in three different periods: now, within three years and ever. Findings reveal that household income, education level and psychological well-being of the respondents as well as their satisfaction concerning the division of tasks within the couple have a significant effect on second birth decision-making. However, these determinants differ significantly regarding the timing of the intended child. On the other hand, there seems to be no effect of ideational changes, represented by a measure of the spread of post-materialist values within the society, on fertility intentions.

This paper investigates the role of extended parental leave in the return to work of mothers of newborn children. Exploiting the variability in policies offered by European countries, the paper studies the influence of statutory leave on the probability of returning to work at different ages of the child. Results suggest that providing paid leaves increases the probability of remaining at home when the child is under 3, and that lengthy statutory leaves are associated with being more likely to return eventually to work.

If individuals become aware of their stereotypes, do they change their behavior? We study this question in the context of teachers’ bias in grading immigrants and native children in middle schools. Teachers give lower grades to immigrant students compared to natives who have the same performance on standardized, blindly-graded tests. We then relate differences in grading to teachers’ stereotypes, elicited through an Implicit Association Test (IAT). We find that math teachers with stronger stereotypes give lower grades to immigrants compared to natives with the same performance. Literature teachers do not differentially grade immigrants based on their own stereotypes. Finally, we share teachers’ own IAT score with them, randomizing the timing of disclosure around the date on which they assign term grades. All teachers informed of their stereotypes before term grading increase grades assigned to immigrants. Revealing stereotypes may be a powerful intervention to decrease discrimination, but it may also induce a reaction from individuals who were not acting in a biased way.