Strategic Unemployment

Julia Angerhausen, Christian Bayer and Burkhard Hehenkamp

Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), 2010, vol. 166, issue 3, 439-461

Abstract: The empirical literature on happiness finds that employment significantly contributes to well-being. We propose a dynamic model that explains why individuals may nonetheless be reluctant to pick up low-paid work. Accepting low-paid work will put them in an adverse position in future wage bargaining, as employers could infer the individual's low reservation wage from his working history. Employers will exploit their knowledge by offering low wages to this individual in the future. Therefore, employees with low reservation wage strategically opt into unemployment to signal a high reservation wage.

JEL-codes: D82 J30 J64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mohrsiebeck.com/en/article/strategic-u ... 28093245610793102107 (text/html)
Fulltext access is included for subscribers to the printed version.

Related works:
Working Paper: Strategic Unemployment (2006)
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:mhr:jinste:urn:sici:0932-4569(201009)166:3_439:su_2.0.tx_2-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
Mohr Siebeck GmbH & Co. KG, P.O.Box 2040, 72010 Tübingen, Germany

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE) is currently edited by Gerd Mühlheußer and Bayer, Ralph-C

More articles in Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE) from Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Thomas Wolpert ().