Data and Codes for: "Job Seekers' Perceptions and Employment Prospects: Heterogeneity, Duration Dependence and Bias"

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Andreas I. Mueller, The University of Texas at Austin; Johannes Spinnewijn, London School of Economics; Giorgio Topa, Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Version: View help for Version V1

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MST			10/19/2020 08:17:AM
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Project Citation:

Mueller, Andreas I., Spinnewijn, Johannes, and Topa, Giorgio. Data and Codes for: “Job Seekers’’ Perceptions and Employment Prospects: Heterogeneity, Duration Dependence and Bias".” Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2020. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2020-12-17. https://doi.org/10.3886/E120501V1

Project Description

Summary: This paper uses job seekers’ elicited beliefs about job finding to disentangle the sources of the decline in job-finding rates by duration of unemployment. We document that beliefs have strong predictive power for job finding, but are not revised downward when remaining unemployed and are subject to optimistic bias, especially for the long-term unemployed. Leveraging the predictive power of beliefs, we find substantial heterogeneity in job finding with the resulting dynamic selection explaining most of the observed negative duration dependence in job finding. Moreover, job seekers’ beliefs under-react to heterogeneity in job finding, distorting search behavior and increasing long-term unemployment.

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: Job Finding; Duration Dependence; Heterogeneity; Job Search; Expectations; Bias

JEL Classification:
      D84 Expectations; Speculations
      E24 Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
      J64 Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search

Geographic Coverage: United States

Time Period(s): 10/1/2009 – 4/15/2010 (Krueger-Mueller Survey); 12/1/2012 – 6/30/2019 (Survey of Consumer Expectations)

Universe:

Krueger-Mueller Survey: Unemployment insurance recipients in New Jersey

Survey of Consumer Expectations: Unemployed workers

Data Type(s): program source code; survey data

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Published Versions

V1 [2020-12-17]

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