Using CPS data from 1979-2009 we examine how cyclical downturns and industry-specific demand shocks affect wage differentials between white non-Hispanic men and women, Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites, and African-Americans and non-Hispanic whites. Women's relative earnings are harmed by...

Contrary to the experiences of other countries, perceptions of job insecurity in Russia were not correlated with the rates of unemployment and the business cycle over the last decade. We develop the theoretical framework that predicts that the individual perceptions of job insecurity depend on...

This paper investigates whether policies that encourage recipients to exit welfare for full-time employment influence participation in educational activity. The Self-Sufficiency Project ('SSP') was a demonstration project where long-term welfare recipients randomly assigned to the treatment...

We first confirm previous results with the German Socio-Economic Panel by Layard et al. (2010), and obtain strong negative effects of comparison income. However, when we split the sample by age, we find quite different results for reference income. The effects on life-satisfaction are positive...

Using several microeconomic data sets from the United States and the Netherlands, and the examples of height and beauty, this study examines whether: 1) Absolute or relative differences in a characteristic are what affect labor-market and other outcomes; and 2) The effects of a characteristic...

This paper challenges the common assumption made by economists to date that income comparisons are similarly important in different segments of the subjective well-being (SWB) distribution. The results, based on the 2000-2007 waves of the German SOEP and on a Generalized Ordered Probit for panel...

We use a simple regression-based approach to measure the relationship between employment growth, hirings and separations in a large panel of German establishments over the period 1993-2009. Although the average level of hiring and separation is much lower in Germany than in the US, as expected,...

The academic circles are devoting a growing interest to delayed graduation and overeducation, but none has analyzed the joint consequences of these two phenomena. Thus, this paper studies the link between graduation not within the minimum period and overeducation, and the effects of these...

In the book Myth and Measurement, Card and Krueger (1995) examine the economic impact of the 1989 minimum wage hike on the welfare of 110 firms which employ a disproportionate number of minimum-wage workers. Their results show mixed evidence that excess returns associated with news about the...