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Personality traits and unemployment: Evidence from longitudinal data

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  • Viinikainen, Jutta
  • Kokko, Katja
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    Abstract

    This study contributes to the literature on how personality is related to labour market success by providing evidence on the relationship between personality traits and unemployment. After accounting for reverse causality and measurement error, our results suggest that higher openness was associated with increased cumulative unemployment at the prime working age. It seems that this connection occurs because individuals with higher openness enter into unemployment spells more frequently – not because their unemployment spells would be particularly long.

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    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487012000992
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    Article provided by Elsevier in its journal Journal of Economic Psychology.

    Volume (Year): 33 (2012)
    Issue (Month): 6 ()
    Pages: 1204-1222

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    Handle: RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:33:y:2012:i:6:p:1204-1222
    Contact details of provider: Web page: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/joep

    Keywords: Personality; Unemployment; Stability of the Big Five personality traits; Reverse causality; Errors-in-variables bias;

    Find related papers by JEL classification:

    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search

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