The Role of Social Capital on the Searching Behaviours of a Job Seeker in the Multiple Labour Markets

This study aims to build a two-stage theoretical model to analyse the role of social capital on the searching behaviours of a job seeker in two different markets. As the advantage of the social capital in either market triggers the reservation wages in both two markets equally, the job seeker should prioritize his or her resources enhancing a larger amount of the social capital in a particular market. Consequently, the job seeker tends to search more intensively in the market where she or he has a higher level of social capital. That is the seeker can shorten the expected searching time. The proposed model also explains why the job seeker sometimes chooses the 2nd highest wage offer instead of the highest one. JEL Classifications: C02, D83, J64

Household Search and the Marital Wage Premium

We develop a model where selection into marriage and household search generate a marital wage premium. Beyond selection, married individuals earn higher wages for two reasons. First, income pooling within a joint household raises risk-averse individuals’ reservation wages. Second, married individuals climb the job ladder faster, as they internalize that higher wages increase their partner’s selectivity over offers. Specialization according to comparative advantage in search generates a premium that increases in spousal education, as in the data. Quantitatively, household search explains 10–33 percent and 20–58 percent of the premium for males and females, respectively, and accounts for its increase with spousal education. (JEL D83, J12, J16, J24, J31, J64)

The Impact of Career Concerns and Cognitive Dissonance on Bureaucrats’ Use of Benefit-Cost Analysis

Previous research shows that Benefit-Cost Analysis (BCA) is seldom done in Sweden, and that the results e.g., in Norway and the Netherlands do not influence the ultimate policy choice. We explain why bureaucrats may choose (not) to do a BCA with cognitive- and search costs coupled with career concerns. Given the initial policy chosen by an agenda setter, bureaucrats who stay working at an agency have policy preferences close to the initial policy; those with reservation wages above a threshold quit and therefore do not influence policy. The bureaucrats’ preferences converge to the initial policy level over time. A BCA reveals the inefficiency of the initial policy and the bureaucrats consequently have no incentive to do one, except when the policy is restricted by a binding governmental budget constraint.

Estimating the reservation wage across city groups in Colombia: A stochastic frontier approach

We use the stochastic frontier approach to estimate the reservation wage across different city groups in Colombia. We use the information of GEIH from 2008-2019 of 23 urban cities. We find empirical evidence in favour of the search theory predictions that suggest a positive relation of the reservation wage with the level of education and with the net family labour income. We also find a gender gap in the reservation wage and explore this gap controlling by the level of education and presence of children in the household. Contrary to the results found in the literature, we find that the presence of children reduces the reservation wage of women and men. Finally, we found that the reservation wage increases with the level of development and productivity of the cities, however, qualified workers in low-quality cities present higher reservation wages than median quality cities.

Social policy and labor supply: The impact of activating labor market institutions on reservation wages

Activation as a social policy that facilitates transitions into the labor market continues to influence modern welfare states until today. Taking the case of Germany, we study the relationship between embeddedness of benefit recipients in activating labor market institutions and individual labor supply. Using panel data, we estimate the effects of transitions between key institutional states with different degrees of activation on reservation wages. We show that reservation wages are sensitive to activation: The transition from gainful employment into unemployment benefit receipt leads to an average 3.2 percent decrease in reservation wages. The transition from gainful employment into welfare benefit receipt - an institutional state with far more rigorous activation - leads to a stronger decrease of 4.9 percent. Mediation analyses show that the income associated with different institutional states is the predominant mechanism that drives the effect on reservation wages. However, subjective social status also partly mediates the effect.

Unemployment Insurance and Job Search Behavior*

How does unemployment insurance (UI) affect unemployed workers’ search behavior? Search models predict that, until benefit exhaustion, UI depresses job search effort and increases reservation wages. Over an unemployment spell, search effort should increase up to benefit exhaustion, and stay high thereafter. Meanwhile, reservation wages should decrease up to benefit exhaustion and stay low thereafter. To test these predictions, we link administrative registers to data on job search behavior from a major online job search platform in France. We follow over 400,000 workers, as long as they remain unemployed. We analyze the changes in search behavior around benefits exhaustion, and take two steps to isolate the individual response to unemployment benefits. First, our longitudinal data allows us to correct for changes in sample composition over the spell. Second, we exploit data on workers eligible for 12–24 months of UI as well as workers ineligible for UI, to control for behavior changes over the unemployment spell that are independent of UI. Our results confirm the predictions of search models. We find that search effort (the number of job applications) increases by at least 50% during the year preceding benefits exhaustion and remains high thereafter. The target monthly wage decreases by at least 2.4% during the year preceding benefits exhaustion, and remains low thereafter. Additionally, we provide evidence for duration dependence: workers decrease the wage they target by 1.5% over each year of unemployment, irrespective of their UI status.