The Role of Social Work Norms in Job Searching and Subjective Well-Being

Alois Stutzer and Rafael Lalive

Journal of the European Economic Association, 2004, vol. 2, issue 4, 696-719

Abstract: Social norms are usually neglected in economics, because they are to a large extent enforced through nonmarket interactions and difficult to isolate empirically. In this paper, we offer a direct measure of the social norm to work and we show that this norm has important economic effects. The stronger the norm, the more quickly unemployed people find a new job. This behavior can be explained by utility differences, probably due to social pressure. Unemployed people are significantly less happy than employed people and their reduction in life satisfac-tion is the larger, the stronger the norm is. (JEL: I31, J64) Copyright (c) 2004 The European Economic Association.

Date: 2004
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Working Paper: The Role of Social Work Norms in Job Searching and Subjective Well-Being (2001)
Working Paper: The Role of Social Work Norms in Job Searching and Subjective Well-Being
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tpr:jeurec:v:2:y:2004:i:4:p:696-719

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