Don’t Worry, Be Happy? Happiness and Reemployment Subjective well-being is primarily treated as an outcome variable in the economic literature. However, is happiness also a driver of behavior and life’s outcomes? Rich survey data of recent entrants into unemployment in Germany show that a significant inverted U-shaped relationship exists between residual happiness and an unemployed individual’s...

We analyze mobility in urban Mexico between three labor market states: working in the formal sector, working in the informal sector, and not working. We use a dynamic multinomial logit panel data model with random effects, explaining the labor market state of each individual during each time period. The data is drawn from Mexico’s Urban Employment Survey, a quarterly household survey for urban ...

A worker’s job can be improved through on-the-job search (OJS) and job upgrading. Incorporating these external and internal job dynamics into a directed search model, this paper analytically characterizes the socially efficient allocation and quantitatively evaluates the model. The analysis shows that efficient OJS is front-loaded in a worker’s career and stops after a finite number of job swit...

This paper investigates the relationship between personality traits in adolescence and education and labour market choices. In particular, we investigate the impact of locus of control, effort and diligence, and self-esteem on the risk of youths being unemployed (sometimes referred to as NEET (“Not in Education, Employment or Training”), assuming unconfoundedness. Thus, our focus is on early dr...

Do the Unemployed Become Successful Entrepreneurs? A Comparison between the Unemployed, Inactive and Wage-Earners In many countries unemployed people are helped to become self-employed. Selfemployment, however, does not necessarily lead to success. Many leave self-employment after a short period and the economic outcome varies greatly. It is important to learn more about the economic outcome fo...

Using nationally representative household survey data from 1995 to 2006, this paper explores heterogeneity among female part-time wage (salaried) workers in post-apartheid South Africa, specifically distinguishing between individuals who choose to work parttime and part-time workers who report wanting to work longer hours. As in studies of voluntary and involuntary part-time employment in other...

Neighbourhood Effects, Housing Tenure, and Individual Employment Outcomes This paper investigates whether individuals living in neighbourhoods with high concentrations of unemployment are less likely to enter work if they are unemployed and more likely to lose their job if they are employed. The main challenge in the neighbourhood effects literature is the identification of causal neighbourhood...

Is the Wage Curve Formal or Informal? Evidence for Colombia The objective of this paper is to analyse the existence or not of a wage curve in Colombia, paying special attention to the differences between formal and informal workers, an issue that has been systematically ignored in the wage curve literature. The obtained results using microdata from the Colombian Continuous Household Survey (CHS...

Mobility in the Urban Labor Market: A Panel Data Analysis for Mexico ∗ We analyze mobility in urban Mexico between three labor market states: working in the formal sector, working in the informal sector, and not working. We use a dynamic multinomial logit panel data model with random effects, explaining the labor market state of each individual during each time period. The data is drawn from Me...

AUGUST 2017 IZA DP No. 10944 Ethnic Differences in Duration and Timing of Exposure to Neighbourhood Disadvantage during Childhood This paper examines ethnic differences in childhood neighborhood disadvantage among children living in the Netherlands. In contrast to more conventional approaches for assessing children’s exposure to neighborhood poverty and affluence (e.g., point-in-time and cumula...