Evidence of Added Worker Effect from the 2008 Economic Crisis

This paper contributes to the research on interdependencies in spousal labor supply by analyzing labor supply response of married women to their husbands' job losses ("added worker effect"). It empirically tests the hypothesis of added worker effect relying on a case study on Turkey during the global economic crisis of 2008. Identification is achieved by exploiting the exogenous variation in the output of male-dominated sectors that were hit hard by the crisis and the high degree of gender segmentation that characterizes the Turkish labor market. Findings based on the instrumental variable approach suggest that the probability of entering the labor force for a woman increases by up to 29% in response to her husband's unemployment. However the effect is not contemporaneous; it appears with a quarter of lag and remains existent only for two quarters

State Dependence in Welfare Benefits in a Non-Welfare Context

This study contributes to the ongoing debate about welfare dependency centered on the western societies through an empirical analysis, within the context of a developing country. It examines state dependence in social assistance benefit receipt using longitudinal data from Turkey, where benefit receipt and persistence rates have witnessed a significant increase since the last decade. Identification is achieved by dynamic random effects probit models, controlling for unobserved heterogeneity and endogenous initial conditions. Particularly, Wooldridge's (2005) estimator and its extensions are applied for achieving consistent and correct estimates of state dependence. In order to check for sensitivity, the results are compared with the results from Heckman's (1981) reduced form approach. Both estimators enable us to deal with the potential bias due to the short panel length. It is found that the benefit receipt of the last year increases the likelihood of benefit receipt in the current year by 17 to 22 percentage points. This evidence suggests that state dependence in social assistance might also be a relevant phenomenon for developing countries

Your Spouse Is Fired! How Much Do You Care?

This study is the first to provide a causal estimate of the subjective well-being effects of spousal unemployment at the couple level. Using German panel data on married and cohabiting partners for 1991-2013 and information on exogenous job termination induced by workplace closure, we show that spousal unemployment reduces the life satisfaction of indirectly-affected spouses. The impact is equally pronounced among female and male partners. Importantly, the results are not driven by an income effect, but likely reflect the psychological costs of unemployment. Our findings are robust to a battery of sensitivity checks and imply that public policy programs aimed at mitigating the negative consequences of unemployment need to consider within-couple spillovers

Your spouse is fired! How much do you care?

This study is the first to provide a causal estimate of the subjective well-being effects of spousal unemployment at the couple level. Using German panel data on married and cohabiting partners for 1991-2013 and information on exogenous job termination induced by workplace closure, we show that spousal unemployment reduces the life satisfaction of indirectly-affected spouses. The impact is equally pronounced among female and male partners. Importantly, the results are not driven by an income effect, but likely reflect the psychological costs of unemployment. Our findings are robust to a battery of sensitivity checks and imply that public policy programs aimed at mitigating the negative consequences of unemployment need to consider within-couple spillovers

The impact of non-cognitive skills and risk preferences on rural-to-urban migration: Evidence from Ukraine

This paper provides evidence on the impacts of non-cognitive skills and attitudes towards risk on the decision to migrate from rural to urban areas. Our analysis is based on a unique four-wave panel of Ukrainian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey for the period between 2003 and 2012. Adopting the Five Factor Model of personality structure, and using it in the evaluation of non-cognitive skills, our results suggest that such personality traits as openness to new experience and the willingness to take risks increase the probability of migration. On the other hand, the non-cognitive skills conscientiousness and extraversion are found to be negatively associated with the propensity to migrate. The effects are statistically and quantitatively significant, and mainly driven by movements from rural areas into cities. Our results are robust to several sensitivity checks, including tests for reverse causality

SEQUENTIAL DATA WEIGHTING PROCEDURES FOR COMBINED RATIO ESTIMATORS IN COMPLEX SAMPLE SURVEYS

In sample surveys weighting is applied to data to increase the quality of estimates. Data weighting can be used for several purposes. Sample design weights can be used to adjust the differences in selection probabilities for non-self weighting sample designs. Sample design weights, adjusted for nonresponse and non-coverage through the sequential data weighting process. The unequal selection probability designs represented the complex sampling designs. Among many reasons of weighting, the most important reasons are weighting for unequal probability of selection, compensation for nonresponse, and post-stratification. Many highly efficient estimation methods in survey sampling require strong information about auxiliary variables, x. The most common estimation methods using auxiliary information in estimation stage are regression and ratio estimator. This paper proposes a sequential data weighting procedure for the estimators of combined ratio mean in complex sample surveys and general variance estimation for the population ratio mean. To illustrate the utility of the proposed estimator, Turkish Demographic and Health Survey 2003 real life data is used. It is shown that the use of auxiliary information on weights can considerably improve the efficiency of the estimates

Comprehensive Synthesis of Monohydroxy-Cucurbit[n]urils (n=5, 6, 7, 8): High Purity and High Conversions

We describe a photochemical method to introduce a single alcohol function directly on cucurbit[n]urils (n = 5, 6, 7, 8) with conversions of the order 95-100% using hydrogen peroxide and UV light. The reaction was easily scaled up to 1 g for CB[6] and CB[7]. Spin trapping of cucurbituril radicals combined with MS experiments allowed us to get insights about the reaction mechanism and characterize CB [5], CB[6], CB[7], and C13[8] monofunctional compounds. Experiments involving O-18 isotopically labeled water indicated that the mechanism was complex and showed signs of both radical and ionic intermediates. DFT calculations allowed estimating the Bond Dissociation Energies (BDEs) of each hydrogen atom type in the CB series, providing an explanation of the higher reactivity of the "equatorial" C-H position of CB[n] compounds. These results also showed that, for CB [8], direct functionalization on the cucurbituril skeleton is more difficult because one of the methylene hydrogen atoms (H-b) has its BDE lowering within the series and coming close to that of H-c, thus opening the way to other types of free radicals generated on the CB[8] skeleton leading to several side products. Yet CB[5]-(OH)(1) and CB[8]-(OH)(1), the first CB[8] derivative, were obtained in excellent yields thanks to the soft method presented here

Your spouse is fired! How much do you care?

This study is the first to provide a causal estimate of the cross-spouse subjective well-being consequences of unemployment. Using German panel data on married and cohabiting partners for 1991-2015 and information on exogenous unemployment entry due to workplace closure, we show that one spouse's unemployment experience reduces the life satisfaction of the other partner. The estimated spillover is at least one quarter of the effect of own unemployment and is equally pronounced among female and male partners. In addition, while wives' life satisfaction does not recover even two years after their partners becoming unemployed, husbands only react to their wives' joblessness during the first year of unemployment. Our results are insensitive to income controls and the couple's position in the income distribution, thus reflecting the non-pecuniary costs of unemployment. Although the income loss hardly explains the negative spillover effects of unemployment on spousal life satisfaction, we document large declines in spousal satisfaction with household income and living standards. This finding supports the argument that the costs of unemployment borne by indirectly affected spouses extend beyond the loss of consumption opportunities and might be rather related to social values attached to market work. Being robust to a battery of sensitivity checks, our findings imply that public policy programs aimed at mitigating unemployment's negative consequences need to target not only those directly affected but also cohabiting spouses.</p