Becoming (Un)employed and Life Satisfaction: Asymmetric Effects and Potential Omitted Variable Bias in Empirical Happiness Studies

Wolfgang Maennig and Markus Wilhelm ()
Additional contact information
Markus Wilhelm: Chair for Economic Policy, University of Hamburg

No 41, Working Papers from Chair for Economic Policy, University of Hamburg

Abstract: Becoming unemployed has negative effects on life satisfaction; a transition from unemployment to employment, however, has stronger positive effects in absolute terms. The asymmetry of the non-pecuniary effect indicates a potential “omitted variable bias” in previous empirical happiness studies.

Keywords: Happiness; life satisfaction; asymmetric effect; labour status; employment; unemployment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I31 J01 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 7 pages
Date: 2011-12-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Published in Hamburg Contemporary Economic Discussions, Issue 41, 2011

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.hced.uni-hamburg.de/WorkingPapers/HCED-041.pdf Second version, 2011 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hce:wpaper:041

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Chair for Economic Policy, University of Hamburg Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wolfgang Maennig ().