We investigate how apprenticeship training affects the early career mobility and earnings profiles of young apprentices in Germany. The heterogeneous quality and nature (whether general or firm specific) of training across firms is expected to be reflected in the post-apprenticeship mobility and...

Exploiting the theoretical parallels between the matching of workers to jobs in the labour market and the matching of individuals in the marriage market, we use a search theoretic model of marriage formation and dissolution to examine the effect of divorce costs on both decisions. By introducing...

We look for evidence of adaptation in well-being to major life events using eighteen waves of British panel data. Adaptation to marriage, divorce, birth of a child and widowhood appears to be rapid and complete, whereas this is not the case for unemployment. These findings are remarkably similar...

This paper examines the factors that influence transitions into self-employment, paying particular attention to gender differences. We find that: (i) men are more responsive to the wage differential between wage/salaried employment and self-employment; (ii) liquidity constraints are more...

Using cross-sectional data from the first two rounds of the European Social Survey (ESS), we examine the relationship between income, relative income and happiness across 19 European countries. We find that a positive and statistically significant relationship between income and happiness does...

This paper considers the psychological impact of past unemployment. Using 11 waves of German panel data, we show that life satisfaction is lower not only for the current unemployed (relative to the employed), but also for those with higher levels of past unemployment. However, the negative...

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to model the dynamic path of adjustment towards pre-unemployment levels of wellbeing for a group of full-time workers who experienced job loss. Design/methodology/approach – Based on data from the German Socio-economic Panel, a large-scale panel survey, the...

We look for evidence of habituation in twenty waves of German panel data: do individuals, after life and labour market events, tend to return to some baseline level of well-being? Although the strongest life satisfaction effect is often at the time of the event, we find significant lag and lead...