IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/econjl/vy2014i576p540-568.html

Cash‐on‐hand and the Duration of Job Search: Quasi‐experimental Evidence from Norway

Author

Listed:
  • Christoph Basten
  • Andreas Fagereng
  • Kjetil Telle

Abstract

We identify the causal effect of lump-sum severance payments on nonemployment duration in Norway by exploiting a discontinuity in eligibility at age 50. We find that a severance payment worth 1.2 months’ earnings at the median lowers the fraction re-employed after a year by seven percentage points. Data on household wealth enable us to verify that the effect is decreasing in prior wealth, which favors an interpretation as liquidity constraints over the alternative of mental accounting. Finding liquidity constraints in Norway, despite its equitable wealth distribution and generous welfare state, means they are likely to exist also in other countries.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Christoph Basten & Andreas Fagereng & Kjetil Telle, 2014. "Cash‐on‐hand and the Duration of Job Search: Quasi‐experimental Evidence from Norway," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 0(576), pages 540-568, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:econjl:v::y:2014:i:576:p:540-568
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/ecoj.2014.124.issue-576
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Vargas Juliana Mesén & Linden Bruno Van der, 2019. "Why Cash Transfer Programs Can Both Stimulate and Slow Down Job Finding," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Sciendo & Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 8(1), pages 1-27, June.
    2. Koray Aktas, 2021. "Characterizing Life-Cycle Dynamics of Annual Days of Work, Wages, and Cross-Covariances," Working Papers 465, University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics.
    3. Milan Vodopivec, 2013. "Introducing unemployment insurance to developing countries," IZA Journal of Labor Policy, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 2(1), pages 1-23, December.
    4. Konstantinos Tatsiramos & Jan C. Ours, 2014. "Labor Market Effects Of Unemployment Insurance Design," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(2), pages 284-311, April.
    5. Juliana MESÉN VARGAS & Bruno VAN DER LINDEN, 2017. "Is there always a trade-off between insurance and incentives? The case of unemployment with subsistence constraints," LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES 2017014, Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES).
    6. Koray Aktaş, 2025. "Characterising life-cycle dynamics of annual days of work, wages, and cross-covariances," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 23(2), pages 571-604, June.
    7. Andersson, Josefine, 2018. "Lump-sum severance grants and the duration of unemployment," Working Paper Series 2018:23, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
    8. Ruud Gerards & Riccardo Welters, 2020. "Liquidity Constraints, Unemployed Job Search and Labour Market Outcomes," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 82(3), pages 625-646, June.
    9. Kyyrä, Tomi & Pesola, Hanna & Rissanen, Aarne, 2017. "Unemployment Insurance in Finland: A Review of Recent Changes and Empirical Evidence on Behavioral Responses," Research Reports 184, VATT Institute for Economic Research.
    10. Simon Franklin, 2018. "Location, Search Costs and Youth Unemployment: Experimental Evidence from Transport Subsidies," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 128(614), pages 2353-2379, September.
    11. Arna Vardardottir & Michaela Pagel, 2016. "The Liquid Hand-to-Mouth: Evidence from a Personal Finance Management Software," 2016 Meeting Papers 789, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    12. Gerards, Ruud & Welters, Riccardo, 2022. "Job search in the presence of a stressor: Does financial hardship change the effectiveness of job search?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    13. Vethaak, Heike & de Bruijn, Ernst-Jan & Knoef, Marike & Koning, Pierre, 2025. "Deter and Deteriorate: The Effects of Application Processing Times on Welfare Receipt and Employment," IZA Discussion Papers 17839, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. Juliana Mesén Vargas, 2018. "Income Effect on Labor Outcomes for People Living in Poverty: the case of PROGRESA," LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES 2018015, Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES).
    15. François Fontaine & Janne Nyborg Jensen & Rune Vejlin, 2024. "Wealth, Portfolios, and Nonemployment Duration," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 56(7), pages 1861-1886, October.
    16. Basten, Christoph & Koch, Catherine, 2015. "The causal effect of house prices on mortgage demand and mortgage supply: Evidence from Switzerland," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 1-22.
    17. de Bruijn, Ernst-Jan & Vethaak, Heike & Koning, Pierre & Knoef, Marike, 2023. "Debt Relief for the Financially Vulnerable: Impact on Employment, Welfare Receipt, and Mental Health," IZA Discussion Papers 16336, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C41 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Duration Analysis; Optimal Timing Strategies
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • J65 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment Insurance; Severance Pay; Plant Closings

    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:wly:econjl:v::y:2014:i:576:p:540-568. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/resssea.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.