Repeated Job Quits: Stepping stones or learning about quality?

Despite the fact that worker quits are often associated with wage gains and higheroverall job satisfaction, many workers quit once again within one or two years afterchanging jobs initially. Such repeated job quit behavior may arise as a steppingstone to better quality jobs (Burdett, 1978) or as a response to unexpectedly lowjob quality (Jovanovic, 1979).This paper tests the validity of both explanations using data from the UK labormarket in order to improve our understanding of job search behavior. Results frompanel estimations of job quits and job satisfaction illustrate that the labor market ischaracterized by elements of both explanations. More specifically, a variancedecomposition shows that the stepping stone model explains 80 percent ofrepeated job quit behavior; the remaining 20 percent is the result of learning aboutjob quality. Hence, workers appear to need several job quits to find their mostpreferred job and multiple job quits serve as a stepping stone to more satisfaction atwork.education, training and the labour market;

Repeated Job Quits: Stepping Stones or Learning about Quality?

Despite the fact that worker quits are often associated with wage gains and higher overall job satisfaction, many workers quit once again within one or two years after changing jobs initially. Such repeated job quit behavior may arise as a stepping stone to better quality jobs (Burdett, 1978) or as a response to unexpectedly low job quality (Jovanovic, 1979). This paper tests the validity of both explanations using data from the UK labor market in order to improve our understanding of job search behavior. Results from panel estimations of job quits and job satisfaction illustrate that the labor market is characterized by elements of both explanations. More specifically, a variance decomposition shows that the stepping stone model explains 80 percent of repeated job quit behavior; the remaining 20 percent is the result of learning about job quality. Hence, workers appear to need several job quits to find their most preferred job and multiple job quits serve as a stepping stone to more satisfaction at work.labor mobility, job satisfaction, job search

Social Support Shopping: Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity in Disability Insurance Reform

This paper examines how a change in the generosity of one social assistance program generates spillovers onto other social assistance programs. We exploit an age discontinuity in the stringency of the 1993 Dutch disability reforms to estimate the causal effect of exit from disability insurance (DI) on participation in other social assistance programs. We find strong evidence of "social support shopping": 43 percent of those induced to leave DI due to the reform receive an alternative form of social assistance two years after the implementation of the reform. As a result, for each Euro saved in DI benefits, the government has to spend an extra 60 cents in other social assistance programs. This crowd-out rate grows from 60% to 69% if we also take into account the response of the partners’ of those affected by the DI reform. The crowd-out effect declines over time, but is still 25% eight years after the reform.crowd-out, spillover effects, social insurance, income assistance, welfare, regression discontinuity, administrative data

Non-Standard Employment Patterns in the Netherlands

The Dutch labour market is the European leader in part-time employment. Both for men and women the incidence of part-time work is higher than in most other European countries. However, this does not imply that traditional employment i.e. full-time jobs have disappeared in the Netherlands. In fact, looking at aggregate figures masks the enormous heterogeneity in the incidence of atypical work across different occupations. This paper investigates trends in atypical work in the Netherlands in the period 1994-2008, where specific attention has been paid to differential trends across different occupations over time. We find that there is a huge amount of variety in atypical work across Dutch occupations. To a certain extent this matches the preferences of employees and employers in the Dutch labour market. However, some workers in particular low-skilled workers suffer from job insecurity and a lack of career prospects due to their limited possibilities to move to better jobs. The current economic crisis and the rising unemployment rate make their situation even more uncertain

Health Effects of Containing Moral Hazard: Evidence from Disability Insurance Reform

We exploit an age discontinuity in a Dutch disability insurance (DI) reform to identify the health impact of stricter eligibility criteria and reduced generosity. Women subject to the more stringent rule experience greater rates of hospitalization and mortality. A 1,000 reduction in annual benefits leads to a rise of 4.2 percentage points in the probability of being hospitalized and a 2.6 percentage point higher probability of death more than 10 years after the reform. There are no effects on the hospitalization of men subject to stricter rules but their mortality rate is reduced by 1.2 percentage points. The negative health effect on females is restricted to women with low pre-disability earnings. We hypothesize that the gender difference in the effect is due to the reform tightening eligibility particularly with respect to mental health conditions, which are more prevalent among female DI claimants. A simple back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that every dollar reduction in DI is almost completely offset by additional health care costs. This implies that policy makers considering a DI reform should carefully balance the welfare gains from reduced moral hazard against losses not only from less coverage of income risks but also from deteriorated health

Unhappiness and Job Finding

It is puzzling that people feel quite unhappy when they become unemployed, while at the same time active labor market policies are needed to bring unemployed back to work more quickly. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we investigate whether there is indeed such a puzzle. First, we find that nearly half of the unemployed do not experience a drop in happiness, which might explain why at least some workers need to be activated. In addition to that, we find that even though unemployed who experience a drop in happiness search more actively for a job, it does not speed up their job finding. Apparently, there is no link between unhappiness and the speed of job finding. Hence, there is no contradiction between unemployed being unhappy and the need for activation policies.

Activating the long-term inactive:Labor market and mental health effects

In many Western countries, a sizeable group of people live on welfare benefits for a long time. Many of them suffer from mental health issues. This paper studies the labor market and mental health effects of an activation program targeting these long-term inactive people. We exploit the staggered implementation of the program in a difference-in-differences design. We find that the activation program does not affect labor market outcomes of men and women. However, among men who were on mental health medication prior to the start of the program, we find a substantial drop in mental health drug prescriptions in the years following the start of the program.</p

Testosterone and the Gender Wage Gap

Testosterone, which induces sexual differentiation of the male fetus, is believed to transfer from males to their littermates in placental mammals. Among humans, individuals with a male twin have been found to exhibit greater masculinization of sexually dimorphic attributes relative to those with a female twin. We therefore regard twinning as a plausible natural experiment to test the link between prenatal exposure to testosterone and labor market earnings. For men, the results suggest positive returns to testosterone exposure. For women, however, the results indicate that prenatal testosterone does not generate higher earnings and may even be associated with modest declines