Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/35026 
Year of Publication: 
2008
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 3385
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
High rates of unemployment entail substantial costs to the working population in terms of reduced subjective well-being. This paper studies the importance of individual economic security, in particular job security, in workers' well-being by exploiting sector-specific institutional differences in the exposure to economic shocks. Public servants have stricter dismissal protection and face a lower risk of their organization's bankruptcy than private sector employees. The empirical results for individual panel data for Germany and repeated cross-sectional data for the United States and the European Union show that the sensitivity of subjective well-being to fluctuations in unemployment rates is much lower in the public sector than in the private. This suggests that increased economic insecurity constitutes an important welfare loss associated with high general unemployment.
Subjects: 
Unemployment
life satisfaction
job security
public sector
JEL: 
E24
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.