IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/xrp/wpaper/xreap2012-21.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

(Endogenous) occupational choices and job satisfaction among recent PhD recipients: evidence from Catalonia

Author

Listed:
  • Antonio Di Paolo

    (AQR – IREA, University of Barcelona, Avda Diagonal, 690, 08034 Barcelona)

Abstract

Drawing on data from two successive cohorts of PhD graduates, this paper analyses differences in overall job satisfaction and specific job domain satisfaction among PhDs employed in different sectors four years after completing their doctorate degrees. Covariate-adjusted job satisfaction differentials suggest that, compared to faculty members, PhD holders employed outside traditional academic and research jobs are more satisfied with the pecuniary facets of their work (principally, because of higher earnings), but significantly less satisfied with the content of their job and with how well the job matches their skills (and, in the case of public sector workers, with their prospects of promotion). The evidence regarding the overall job satisfaction of the PhD holders indicates that working in the public or private sectors is associated with less work well-being, which cannot be fully compensated by the better pecuniary facets of the job. It also appears that being employed in academia or in research centres provides almost the same perceived degree of satisfaction with the job and with its four specific domains. We also take into account the endogenous sorting of PhD holders into different occupations based on latent personal traits that might be related to job satisfaction. The selectivity-corrected job satisfaction differentials reveal the importance of self-selection based on unobservable traits, and confirm the existence of a certain penalisation for working in occupations other than academia or research, which is especially marked in the case of satisfaction with job content and job-skills match. The paper presents additional interesting evidence about the determinants of occupational choice among PhD holders, highlighting the relevance of certain academic attributes (especially PhD funding and pre-and-post-doc research mobility) in affecting the likelihood of being employed in academia, in a research centre or in other public or private sector job four years after completing their doctorate programme.

Suggested Citation

  • Antonio Di Paolo, 2012. "(Endogenous) occupational choices and job satisfaction among recent PhD recipients: evidence from Catalonia," Working Papers XREAP2012-21, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised Dec 2012.
  • Handle: RePEc:xrp:wpaper:xreap2012-21
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.xreap.cat/RePEc/xrp/pdf/XREAP2012-21.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2012
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: http://www.xreap.cat/RePEc/xrp/pdf/XREAP2012-21.pdf
    File Function: Revised version, 2012
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Freeman, Richard B, 1978. "Job Satisfaction as an Economic Variable," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 68(2), pages 135-141, May.
    2. Anna Matas & Josep-Lluis Raymond, 2007. "Cross-section data, disequilibrium situations and estimated coefficients: evidence from car ownership demand," Working Papers XREAP2007-04, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised Jun 2007.
    3. Ivan Moreno-Torres, 2011. "Generic drugs in Spain: price competition vs. moral hazard," Working Papers XREAP2011-04, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised May 2011.
    4. Vicente Royuela, 2012. "What about people in European Regional Science?," Working Papers XREAP2012-12, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised May 2012.
    5. Germà Bel & Xavier Fageda, 2008. "Privatization and competition in the delivery of local services: An empirical examination of the dual market hypothesis," Working Papers XREAP2008-04, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised Apr 2008.
    6. Partha Deb & Pravin K. Trivedi, 2006. "Maximum simulated likelihood estimation of a negative binomial regression model with multinomial endogenous treatment," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 6(2), pages 246-255, June.
    7. Verònica Gombau & Agustí Segarra, 2011. "The Innovation and Imitation Dichotomy in Spanish firms: do absorptive capacity and the technological frontier matter?," Working Papers XREAP2011-22, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised Dec 2011.
    8. Keith A. Bender & John S. Heywood, 2009. "Educational Mismatch among Ph.D.s: Determinants and Consequences," NBER Chapters, in: Science and Engineering Careers in the United States: An Analysis of Markets and Employment, pages 229-255, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Germà Bel & Xavier Fageda, 2009. "Factors explaining local privatization: a meta-regression analysis," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 139(1), pages 105-119, April.
    10. Jordi Jofre-Monseny & Raquel Marín-López & Elisabet Viladecans-Marsal, 2012. "What underlies localization and urbanization economies? Evidence from the location of new firms," Working Papers XREAP2012-08, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised May 2012.
    11. Clark, Andrew E. & Senik, Claudia, 2006. "The (unexpected) structure of "rents" on the French and British labour markets," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 180-196, April.
    12. Simon Luechinger & Alois Stutzer & Rainer winkelmann, 2006. "The Happiness Gains From Sorting and Matching in the Labor Market," IEW - Working Papers 275, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    13. Xosé-Luís Varela-Irimia, 2014. "Age effects, unobserved characteristics and hedonic price indexes: The Spanish car market in the 1990s," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 5(4), pages 419-455, November.
    14. van Praag, B. M. S. & Frijters, P. & Ferrer-i-Carbonell, A., 2003. "The anatomy of subjective well-being," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 29-49, May.
    15. Claudia Tello & Raul Ramos & Manuel Artís, 2012. "Changes in wage structure in Mexico going beyond the mean: An analysis of differences in distribution, 1987-2008," Working Papers XREAP2012-07, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised May 2012.
    16. Francesc Trillas & Daniel Montolio & Néstor Duch, 2011. "Productive Efficiency And Regulatory Reform: The Case Of Vehicle Inspection Services," Revista de Economia Aplicada, Universidad de Zaragoza, Departamento de Estructura Economica y Economia Publica, vol. 19(1), pages 33-59, Spring.
    17. Michael Demoussis & Nicholas Giannakopoulos, 2007. "Exploring Job Satisfaction in Private and Public Employment: Empirical Evidence from Greece," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 21(2), pages 333-359, June.
    18. Danzer, Natalia, 2019. "Job satisfaction and self-selection into the public or private sector: Evidence from a natural experiment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 46-62.
    19. Daniel Albalate & Germà Bel & Xavier Fageda, 2010. "Is it Redistribution or Centralization? On the Determinants of Government Investment in Infrastructure," Working Papers XREAP2010-15, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised Dec 2010.
    20. Partha Deb & Pravin K. Trivedi, 2006. "Specification and simulated likelihood estimation of a non-normal treatment-outcome model with selection: Application to health care utilization," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 9(2), pages 307-331, July.
    21. Francesc Trillas & Daniel Montolio & Néstor Duch, 2011. "Productive Efficiency And Regulatory Reform: The Case Of Vehicle Inspection Services," Revista de Economia Aplicada, Universidad de Zaragoza, Departamento de Estructura Economica y Economia Publica, vol. 19(1), pages 33-59, Spring.
    22. Marta Arespa, 2011. "Macroeconomics of extensive margins: a simple model," Working Papers XREAP2011-19, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised Nov 2011.
    23. Anna Matas & Josep Lluís Raymond, 2006. "Economic development and changes in car ownership patterns," Working Papers CREAP2006-01, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised Jun 2006.
    24. Marta Arespa, 2011. "A New Open Economy Macroeconomic Model with Endogenous Portfolio Diversifi cation and Firms Entry," Working Papers XREAP2011-15, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised Oct 2011.
    25. Mercedes Ayuso & Montserrat Guillen & Catalina Bolancé, 2011. "Loss risk through fraud in car insurance," Working Papers XREAP2011-08, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised Jun 2011.
    26. Sabharwal, Meghna, 2011. "Job satisfaction patterns of scientists and engineers by status of birth," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 40(6), pages 853-863, July.
    27. Tomás del Barrio-Castro & José García-Quevedo, 2009. "The determinants of university patenting: Do incentives matter?," Working Papers 2009/13, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    28. Ernest Miguele & Rosina Moreno, 2012. "Do labour mobility and networks foster geographical knowledge diffusion? The case of European regions," Working Papers XREAP2012-14, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised Jul 2012.
    29. Philippe Moguerou, 2002. "Job satisfaction among US Ph.D. graduates: the effects of gender and employment sector," Labor and Demography 0204002, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    30. Philip Stevens, 2005. "The job satisfaction of English academics and their intentions to quit academe," Labor and Demography 0512005, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    31. Peter Sloane & Melanie Ward, 2001. "Cohort effects and job satisfaction of academics," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(12), pages 787-791.
    32. Jordi Jofre-Montseny & Albert Solé-Ollé, 2007. "Tax differentials and agglomeration economies in intraregional firm location," Working Papers XREAP2007-05, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised Jun 2007.
    33. Néstor Duch-Brown & José García-Quevedo & Daniel Montolio, 2011. "The link between public support and private R&D effort: What is the optimal subsidy?," Working Papers XREAP2011-09, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised Jun 2011.
    34. Keith A. Bender & John S. Heywood, 2006. "Job Satisfaction Of The Highly Educated: The Role Of Gender, Academic Tenure, And Earnings," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 53(2), pages 253-279, May.
    35. Lillydahl, Jane H. & Singell, Larry D., 1993. "Job satisfaction, salaries and unions: The determination of university faculty compensation," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 233-243, September.
    36. John S. Heywood & W. S. Siebert & Xiangdong Wei, 2002. "Worker Sorting and Job Satisfaction: The Case of Union and Government Jobs," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 55(4), pages 595-609, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Catalina Bolancé & Zuhair Bahraoui & Ramon Alemany, 2015. "Estimating extreme value cumulative distribution functions using bias-corrected kernel approaches," Working Papers XREAP2015-01, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised Jan 2015.
    2. Anna Castañer & Mª Mercè Claramunt, 2014. "Optimal stop-loss reinsurance: a dependence analysis," Working Papers XREAP2014-04, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised Apr 2014.
    3. Antonio Di Paolo & Ferran Mañé, 2014. "“Are we wasting our talent? Overqualification and overskilling among PhD graduates”," IREA Working Papers 201426, University of Barcelona, Research Institute of Applied Economics, revised Oct 2014.
    4. Mercedes Ayuso & Montserrat Guillen & Jens Perch Nielsen, 2019. "Improving automobile insurance ratemaking using telematics: incorporating mileage and driver behaviour data," Transportation, Springer, vol. 46(3), pages 735-752, June.
    5. S. Fasola & O. Giambalvo & C. Romano, 2016. "Flexible latent trait aggregation to analyze employability after the Ph.D. in Italy," Journal of Applied Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(1), pages 180-194, January.
    6. Agustí Segarra & Mercedes Teruel & Miquel Angel Bove, 2014. "A territorial approach to R&D subsidies: Empirical evidence for Catalonian firms," Working Papers XREAP2014-07, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised Sep 2014.
    7. Giuseppe Lucio Gaeta, 2015. "Was it worth it? An empirical analysis of over-education among PhD recipients in Italy," International Journal of Social Economics, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 42(3), pages 222-238, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Antonio Di Paolo & Ferran Mañé, 2014. "Are we wasting our talent? Overqualification and overskilling among PhD graduates," Working Papers XREAP2014-06, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised Jun 2014.
    2. Agustí Segarra & Mercedes Teruel & Miquel Angel Bove, 2014. "A territorial approach to R&D subsidies: Empirical evidence for Catalonian firms," Working Papers XREAP2014-07, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised Sep 2014.
    3. Teixidó-Figueras, J. & Duro, J.A., 2014. "Spatial Polarization of the Ecological Footprint Distribution," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 93-106.
    4. Manuela Alcañiz & Montserrat Guillén & Daniel Sánchez-Moscona & Miguel Santolino & Oscar Llatje & Lluís Ramon, 2013. "Prevalence of alcohol-impaired drivers based on random breath tests in a roadside survey," Working Papers XREAP2013-05, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised Jul 2013.
    5. Teixidó-Figueras, Jordi & Duro, Juan Antonio, 2015. "The building blocks of International Ecological Footprint inequality: A Regression-Based Decomposition," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 30-39.
    6. Garcia-López, Miquel-Àngel & Hémet, Camille & Viladecans-Marsal, Elisabet, 2017. "Next train to the polycentric city: The effect of railroads on subcenter formation," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 50-63.
    7. Daniel Albalate & Jordi Rosell, 2016. "Persistent and transient efficiency on the stochastic production and cost frontiers – an application to the motorway sector," Working Papers XREAP2016-04, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised Oct 2016.
    8. Jofre-Monseny, Jordi & Silva, José I. & Vázquez-Grenno, Javier, 2020. "Local labor market effects of public employment," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    9. Ana Maria Osorio & Catalina Bolancé & Nyovane Madise & Katharina Rathmann, 2013. "Social Determinants of Child Health in Colombia: Can Community Education Moderate the Effect of Family Characteristics?," Working Papers XREAP2013-02, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised Mar 2013.
    10. Aida Solé-Auró & Manuela Alcañiz, 2014. "Are we living longer but less healthy? Trends in mortality and morbidity in Catalonia (Spain), 1994-2011," Working Papers XREAP2014-01, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised Jan 2013.
    11. Carmen D. Álvarez-Albelo & Antonio Manresa & Monica Pigem-Vigo, 2015. "Growing through trade: the role of foreign growth and domestic tariffs," Working Papers XREAP2015-04, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised Nov 2015.
    12. Ana Maria Osorio & Catalina Bolancé & Nyovani Madise, 2012. "Intermediary and structural determinants of early childhood health in Colombia: exploring the role of communities," Working Papers XREAP2012-13, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised Jun 2012.
    13. Jordi Jofre-Monseny & Raquel Marín-López & Elisabet Viladecans-Marsal, 2012. "What underlies localization and urbanization economies? Evidence from the location of new firms," Working Papers 2012/9, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    14. Eva Boj & Pedro Delicado & Josep Fortiana & Anna Esteve & Adria Caballe, 2012. "Local Distance-Based Generalized Linear Models using the dbstats package for R," Working Papers XREAP2012-11, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised May 2012.
    15. Vicente Royuela, 2012. "What about people in European Regional Science?," Working Papers XREAP2012-12, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised May 2012.
    16. Joan-Ramon Borrell & Juan Luis Jiménez & Carmen García, 2014. "Evaluating Antitrust Leniency Programs," Journal of Competition Law and Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 10(1), pages 107-136.
    17. Raúl Ramos & Esteban Sanromá & Hipólito Simón, 2015. "An analysis of wage differentials between full-and part-time workers in Spain," Working Papers 2015/29, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    18. Sancho Salcedo-Sanz & L. Carro-Calvo & Mercè Claramunt & Anna Castañer & Maite Marmol, 2013. "An Analysis of Black-box Optimization Problems in Reinsurance: Evolutionary-based Approaches," Working Papers XREAP2013-04, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised May 2013.
    19. Guglielmo D’Amico & Montserrat Guillen & Raimondo Manca, 2012. "Discrete time Non-homogeneous Semi-Markov Processes applied to Models for Disability Insurance," Working Papers XREAP2012-05, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised Mar 2012.
    20. Raúl Ramos & Esteban Sanromá & Hipólito Simón, 2014. "Public-Private Sector Wage Differentials by Type of Contract: Evidence from Spain," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 208(1), pages 107-141, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Job Satisfaction; Job Domain Satisfaction; Occupational Choices; Self-Selection; PhD Holders; Catalonia;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J28 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Safety; Job Satisfaction; Related Public Policy
    • J45 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Public Sector Labor Markets
    • C31 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Cross-Sectional Models; Spatial Models; Treatment Effect Models; Quantile Regressions; Social Interaction Models
    • C35 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Discrete Regression and Qualitative Choice Models; Discrete Regressors; Proportions

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:xrp:wpaper:xreap2012-21. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: XREAP (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/xreapes.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.