This paper shows that job loss is associated with a fall in subjective well-being (SWB). It then looks at how this change in SWB predicts job search and unemployment duration. The findings suggest that those who report feeling hurt by unemployment have shorter unemployment durations. Men who...

This paper uses data from the German Socio-economic Panel Study to examine the effect of personality traits on the formation and dissolution of domestic partnerships. Selection into marriage is associated with distinctly different personality profiles for men and women born before 1960,...

We address the presence, magnitude, and composition of wage gains related to former co-workers and discuss the mechanisms that could explain their existence. Using Hungarian linked employer-employee administrative data and proxying actual co-workership with overlapping work histories, we show...

This paper explores the evolution of the average wage of employees over the life-cycle of a manufacturing plant. The average wage starts out low for a new plant and increases along with labor productivity as the plant ages. As a plant approaches exit, its average wage falls, but more slowly than...

This paper explores the evolution of the average wage of employees over the life-cycle of a manufacturing plant. The average wage starts out low for a new plant and increases along with labor productivity as the plant ages. As a plant approaches exit, its average wage falls, but more slowly than...

Efficiency wages theories argue that the threat of firing, coupled with a high unemployment rate, is a mechanism that discourages employee shirking in asymmetric information contexts. Our empirical analysis aims to test the role of unemployment as a worker discipline device, considering the...

The great majority of studies on the effect of school quality on academic outcomes do not take account of changes in student choices concerning effort if school quality, e.g. class size, changes. We show that empirical estimates of the "total" effect of changes in school quality could be quite...

We investigate whether workers adjust hours worked in response to windfall gains using data from the European Household Panel. The results suggest that a rise in unearned income has a negative (although small) effect on working hours. In particular, after receiving a windfall gain, individuals...

Self-employed workers account for between 8 and 30 % of participants in the labor markets of OECD countries (Blanchower, Self-employment: more may not be better, 2004). This paper develops and estimates a general equilibrium model of the labor market that accounts for this sizable proportion....