There is much evidence that relative income concern reduces subjective wellbeing and raises labour supply - "keeping up with the Joneses" (KUJ), while increasing use of social media and growing inequality encourage comparison. Models with one or two agent-types generally miss the policy relevant...

In this paper we analyse educational choices and earnings of individuals at two different levels in the Portuguese educational system. At each potential exit level we consider two decisions: the decision to continue studying and the employment decision, whereas normally only the first decision...

Using Dutch administrative data, we assess the work and earnings capacity of disability insurance (DI) recipients by estimating employment and earnings responses to benefit cuts. Reassessment of DI entitlement under more stringent criteria removed 14.4 percent of recipients from the program and...

The public economic burden of shifting trends in population health remains uncertain. Sustained increases in obesity, diabetes, and other diseases could reduce life expectancy - with a concomitant decrease in the public-sector's annuity burden - but these savings may be offset by worsening...

We specify a structural life-cycle model of consumption, labour supply and job mobility in an economy with search frictions that allows us to distinguish between different sources of risk and to estimate their effects. The sources of risk are shocks to productivity, job destruction, the process...

This paper analyzes the life-cycle career costs associated with child rearing and decomposes their effects into unearned wages (as women drop out of the labor market), loss of human capital, and selection into more child-friendly occupations. We estimate a dynamic life-cycle model of fertility,...

The paper investigates how employees use secondary employment to smooth out consumption shortfalls from non-anticipated wage shocks in their main employment. The identification strategy exploits surprising changes in firms' wage payment and repayment behavior in Ukraine. Based on unique...

We estimate the responses of gross labor earnings with respect to marginal and average net-of-tax rates in France over the period 2003-2006. We exploit a series of reforms to the income-tax and the payroll-tax schedules that affect individuals who earn less than twice the minimum wage. Our...

We present comparable evidence on intergenerational earnings mobility for Denmark, Finland, Norway, the UK and the US, with a focus on the role of gender and marital status. We confirm that earnings mobility in the Nordic countries is typically greater than in the US and in the UK, but find...

In this chapter we propose a new, dual-process model of labor supply, which incorporates both cognitive and affective aspects of decision-making. Consistent with evidence from neuroscience, the worker may experience conflicting cognitive and affective motivations during the workday. In...