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This paper provides an explanation for the existence of gender discrimination in the labour market focusing on the intergenerational transmission of preferences related to the attitude of women towards jobs and family. Changes in women's preferences over generations depend on the socialization efforts of their parents which in turn are influenced by both the firm's expected recruitment policy and the expected utility from household care. We obtain two types of steady state equilibria: the discriminatory equilibrium, in which women are segregated to low-paid jobs, and the non-discriminatory equilibrium, in which women are hired in highly-paid jobs. The conditions of convergence to each equilibrium are analysed.

This article provides an explanation of the evolution and persistence of the women's segregation in jobs with less on-the-job training opportunities within the framework of an overlapping generations model with intergenerational transmission of preferences. ÔJob-priorityÕ and Ôfamily-priorityÕ preferences are considered. FirmsÕ policy and the distribution of women's preferences are endogenously and simultaneously determined in the long run. The results show though the gender gap in training will diminish, it will also persist over time. This is because both types of women's preferences coexist at the steady state due to the socialisation effort of parents to preserve their own cultural values.The wage differential between men and women has been persistent over time. Although a decline in the wage gap has been observed since the 1970s, a significant gender gap still exists. Altonji and Blank (1999) find that women received 29% lower hourly wages than men in 1995, whereas the difference was 46% in 1979.Gender differences in on-the-job training are often considered as an important source of this male/female wage gap. Gronau (1988) estimates that the gender gap is about 30% and that two-thirds of this gap can be explained by gender differences in firm training, so if this factor was eliminated, the wage gap would be reduced to 10%. 1 Likewise, the lower firm training of women is often related to their weaker labour force attachment. When some on-the-job training is necessary to perform a job, it is costly for the firms to lose workers. Then employers who view women as being more likely to leave the firm will sort women into jobs with fewer training opportunities. Gronau (1988) finds that on average, women report that their jobs require only 9 months of training, compared with 20 months for men and that labour force separation rates are four times as prevalent among women as among men. 1 Other studies that have found that firm training significantly affects the gender wage gap are Lynch (1992), Barron et al. (1993), Hill (1995, Macpherson andHirsch (1995), andOlsen andSexton (1996).2 More examples can be found in Duncan and Hoffman (1979), Royalty (1996), Altonji and Spletzer (1991), Viscusi (1980), among others. Royalty (1996) points out that about one-quarter of the greater propensity of men to receive company training is explained by the different investment horizons of women.

This paper contributes to explain the persistence of differences in levels of entrepreneurship within and across countries. We provide an explanation based on the dynamic interplay between purposeful intergenerational transmission of preferences for entrepreneurship and public administration efficiency. Individuals vote on taxes, and the collected taxes fund the civil servants' wages. The performance of the administration generating an efficient normative and regulatory environment, affects the success of entrepreneurship. We show that an economy can