IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/aut/wpaper/202013.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Devil is in the Details: In and Out of Unemployment - Labour Market Dynamics and the Role of Testosterone

Author

Listed:
  • Peter Eibich

    (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research)

  • Ricky Kanabar

    (Centre for Analysis of Social Policy and Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath)

  • Alexander Plum

    (NZ Work Research Institute, Faculty of Business, Economics and Law at AUT University)

  • Julian Schmied

    (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research)

Abstract

Biological processes have provided new insights into diverging labour market trajectories. In this paper, we use population variation in testosterone levels to explain transition probabilities into and out of unemployment. We follow individual employment histories for 1,771 initially employed and 109 initially unemployed British men from the UK Household Longitudinal Study (“Understanding Society”) be-tween 2009 and 2015. To account for unobserved heterogeneity, we apply dynamic random effect models. We find that individuals with high testosterone levels are more likely to become unemployed, but they are also more likely to exit unemployment. Based on previous studies and descriptive evidence, we argue that these effects are likely driven by personality traits and occupational sorting of men with high testosterone levels. Our findings suggest that latent biological processes can affect job search behaviour and labour market outcomes, without necessarily relating to illness and disability.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Eibich & Ricky Kanabar & Alexander Plum & Julian Schmied, 2020. "The Devil is in the Details: In and Out of Unemployment - Labour Market Dynamics and the Role of Testosterone," Working Papers 2020-13, Auckland University of Technology, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:aut:wpaper:202013
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aut.ac.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/430927/Working-paper-13_20_update.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    labour market dynamics; unemployment; testosterone; random-effects probit;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search
    • C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aut:wpaper:202013. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Gail Pacheco (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fbautnz.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.