IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/vfsc16/145491.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Income in Jeopardy: How Losing Employment Affects the Willingness to Take Risks

Author

Listed:
  • Hetschko, Clemens
  • Preuß, Malte

Abstract

Using German panel data, we assess the causal effect of job loss, and thus of an extensive income shock, on risk attitude. In line with predictions of expected utility reasoning about absolute risk aversion, losing one’s job reduces the willingness to take risks. This effect strengthens in previous hourly wage, begins to manifest itself as soon as an employee perceives the threat of job loss and is of a transitory nature. The change in stated risk attitude matches observable job finding behaviour, confirming the behavioural validity of our results.

Suggested Citation

  • Hetschko, Clemens & Preuß, Malte, 2016. "Income in Jeopardy: How Losing Employment Affects the Willingness to Take Risks," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145491, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:vfsc16:145491
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/145491/1/VfS_2016_pid_6281.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hans-Werner Sinn, 1994. "A Theory of the Welfare State," CESifo Working Paper Series 65, CESifo.
    2. Emilia Del Bono & Andrea Weber & Rudolf Winter-Ebmer, 2012. "Clash Of Career And Family: Fertility Decisions After Job Displacement," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 10(4), pages 659-683, August.
    3. Thomas Dohmen & Armin Falk & Bart H. H. Golsteyn & David Huffman & Uwe Sunde, 2017. "Risk Attitudes Across The Life Course," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 127(605), pages 95-116, October.
    4. Kimball, Miles S, 1990. "Precautionary Saving in the Small and in the Large," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(1), pages 53-73, January.
    5. Claudia R. Sahm, 2012. "How Much Does Risk Tolerance Change?," Quarterly Journal of Finance (QJF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 2(04), pages 1-38.
    6. David Cesarini & Magnus Johannesson & Paul Lichtenstein & Örjan Sandewall & Björn Wallace, 2010. "Genetic Variation in Financial Decision‐Making," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(5), pages 1725-1754, October.
    7. Cobb-Clark, Deborah A. & Schurer, Stefanie, 2012. "The stability of big-five personality traits," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 115(1), pages 11-15.
    8. Browning, Martin & Heinesen, Eskil, 2012. "Effect of job loss due to plant closure on mortality and hospitalization," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 599-616.
    9. Kory Kroft & Fabian Lange & Matthew J. Notowidigdo, 2013. "Duration Dependence and Labor Market Conditions: Evidence from a Field Experiment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 128(3), pages 1123-1167.
    10. Tausch, Franziska & Zumbuehl, Maria, 2018. "Stability of risk attitudes and media coverage of economic news," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 295-310.
    11. Kunze, Lars & Suppa, Nicolai, 2017. "Bowling alone or bowling at all? The effect of unemployment on social participation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 213-235.
    12. Hainmueller, Jens, 2012. "Entropy Balancing for Causal Effects: A Multivariate Reweighting Method to Produce Balanced Samples in Observational Studies," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(1), pages 25-46, January.
    13. Marcus, Jan, 2013. "The Effect of Unemployment on the Mental Health of Spouses – Evidence from plant closures in Germany," EconStor Open Access Articles, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, pages 546-558.
    14. repec:zbw:rwirep:0510 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Montizaan, Raymond M. & Vendrik, Maarten C.M., 2014. "Misery Loves Company: Exogenous shocks in retirement expectations and social comparison effects on subjective well-being," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 1-26.
    16. Isabel Cairó & Tomaz Cajner, 2018. "Human Capital and Unemployment Dynamics: Why More Educated Workers Enjoy Greater Employment Stability," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 128(609), pages 652-682, March.
    17. Thierry Post & Martijn J. van den Assem & Guido Baltussen & Richard H. Thaler, 2008. "Deal or No Deal? Decision Making under Risk in a Large-Payoff Game Show," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(1), pages 38-71, March.
    18. Andrew E. Clark & Ed Diener & Yannis Georgellis & Richard E. Lucas, 2008. "Lags And Leads in Life Satisfaction: a Test of the Baseline Hypothesis," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(529), pages 222-243, June.
    19. Luigi Guiso & Monica Paiella, 2008. "Risk Aversion, Wealth, and Background Risk," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 6(6), pages 1109-1150, December.
    20. Lex Borghans & Angela Lee Duckworth & James J. Heckman & Bas ter Weel, 2008. "The Economics and Psychology of Personality Traits," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 43(4).
    21. Guiso, Luigi & Sapienza, Paola & Zingales, Luigi, 2018. "Time varying risk aversion," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(3), pages 403-421.
    22. Thomas Dohmen & Armin Falk & David Huffman & Uwe Sunde & Jürgen Schupp & Gert G. Wagner, 2011. "Individual Risk Attitudes: Measurement, Determinants, And Behavioral Consequences," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 522-550, June.
    23. Anke Becker & Thomas Deckers & Thomas Dohmen & Armin Falk & Fabian Kosse, 2012. "The Relationship Between Economic Preferences and Psychological Personality Measures," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 4(1), pages 453-478, July.
    24. Brachert, Matthias & Hyll, Walter, 2014. "On the Stability of Preferences: Repercussions of Entrepreneurship on Risk Attitudes," IWH Discussion Papers 5/2014, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH).
    25. Alessandro Bucciol & Raffaele Miniaci, 2018. "Financial Risk Propensity, Business Cycles and Perceived Risk Exposure," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 80(1), pages 160-183, February.
    26. Kristiina Huttunen & Jenni Kellokumpu, 2016. "The Effect of Job Displacement on Couples' Fertility Decisions," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34(2), pages 403-442.
    27. Marco Caliendo & Frank Fossen & Alexander Kritikos, 2014. "Personality characteristics and the decisions to become and stay self-employed," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 42(4), pages 787-814, April.
    28. Görlitz, Katja & Tamm, Marcus, 2015. "Parenthood and Risk Preferences," Ruhr Economic Papers 552, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    29. Callen, Mike & Isaqzadeh, Mohammad & Long, James D. & Sprenger, Charles, 2014. "Violence and risk preference: experimental evidence from Afghanistan," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 102932, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    30. Clemens Hetschko & Andreas Knabe & Ronnie Schöb, 2019. "Looking Back in Anger? Retirement and Unemployment Scarring," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 56(3), pages 1105-1129, June.
    31. Insoo Cho & Peter F. Orazem & Tanya Rosenblat, 2018. "Are Risk Attitudes Fixed Factors or Fleeting Feelings?," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 39(2), pages 127-149, June.
    32. Skriabikova, Olga J. & Dohmen, Thomas & Kriechel, Ben, 2014. "New evidence on the relationship between risk attitudes and self-employment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 176-184.
    33. SonjaC. Kassenboehmer & JohnP. Haisken-DeNew, 2009. "You're Fired! The Causal Negative Effect of Entry Unemployment on Life Satisfaction," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(536), pages 448-462, March.
    34. Matilde Bombardini & Francesco Trebbi, 2012. "Risk Aversion And Expected Utility Theory: An Experiment With Large And Small Stakes," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 10(6), pages 1348-1399, December.
    35. Dohmen, Thomas & Lehmann, Hartmut & Pignatti, Norberto, 2016. "Time-varying individual risk attitudes over the Great Recession: A comparison of Germany and Ukraine," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(1), pages 182-200.
    36. Schildberg-Hörisch, Hannah & Deckers, Thomas & Falk, Armin & Kosse, Fabian, 2014. "How Does Socio-Economic Status Shape a Child's Personality?," VfS Annual Conference 2014 (Hamburg): Evidence-based Economic Policy 100285, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    37. Fossen, Frank M. & Glocker, Daniela, 2017. "Stated and revealed heterogeneous risk preferences in educational choice," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 1-25.
    38. Clemens Hetschko & Andreas Knabe & Ronnie Schöb, 2014. "Changing Identity: Retiring From Unemployment," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 124(575), pages 149-166, March.
    39. Nachman, David C., 1982. "Preservation of "more risk averse" under expectations," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 361-368, December.
    40. Pratt, John W & Zeckhauser, Richard J, 1987. "Proper Risk Aversion," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(1), pages 143-154, January.
    41. Anger, Silke & Camehl, Georg & Peter, Frauke, 2017. "Involuntary job loss and changes in personality traits," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 71-91.
    42. Charles A. Holt & Susan K. Laury, 2002. "Risk Aversion and Incentive Effects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1644-1655, December.
    43. Michael Callen & Mohammad Isaqzadeh & James D. Long & Charles Sprenger, 2014. "Violence and Risk Preference: Experimental Evidence from Afghanistan," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(1), pages 123-148, January.
    44. Deborah A. Cobb‐Clark & Stefanie Schurer, 2013. "Two Economists' Musings on the Stability of Locus of Control," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 0, pages 358-400, August.
    45. Preuss, Malte & Hennecke, Juliane, 2018. "Biased by success and failure: How unemployment shapes locus of control," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 63-74.
    46. Schurer, Stefanie, 2015. "Lifecycle patterns in the socioeconomic gradient of risk preferences," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 482-495.
    47. Markus K. Brunnermeier & Stefan Nagel, 2008. "Do Wealth Fluctuations Generate Time-Varying Risk Aversion? Micro-evidence on Individuals," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(3), pages 713-736, June.
    48. Caliendo, Marco & Fossen, Frank & Kritikos, Alexander, 2010. "The impact of risk attitudes on entrepreneurial survival," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 76(1), pages 45-63, October.
    49. Alain Cohn & Jan Engelmann & Ernst Fehr & Michel André Maréchal, 2015. "Evidence for Countercyclical Risk Aversion: An Experiment with Financial Professionals," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(2), pages 860-885, February.
    50. Alessandro Bucciol & Raffaele Miniaci, 2011. "Household Portfolios and Implicit Risk Preference," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 93(4), pages 1235-1250, November.
    51. Bonin, Holger & Dohmen, Thomas & Falk, Armin & Huffman, David & Sunde, Uwe, 2007. "Cross-sectional earnings risk and occupational sorting: The role of risk attitudes," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(6), pages 926-937, December.
    52. Pierre Blanchard & Jean-Pierre Huiban & Claude Mathieu, 2014. "The shadow of death model revisited with an application to French firms," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(16), pages 1883-1893, June.
    53. Falk, Armin & Becker, Anke & Dohmen, Thomas & Huffman, David B. & Sunde, Uwe, 2016. "The Preference Survey Module: A Validated Instrument for Measuring Risk, Time, and Social Preferences," IZA Discussion Papers 9674, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    54. Ulrike Malmendier & Stefan Nagel, 2011. "Depression Babies: Do Macroeconomic Experiences Affect Risk Taking?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 126(1), pages 373-416.
    55. Jan Goebel & Christian Krekel & Tim Tiefenbach & Nicolas Ziebarth, 2015. "How natural disasters can affect environmental concerns, risk aversion, and even politics: evidence from Fukushima and three European countries," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 28(4), pages 1137-1180, October.
    56. Lisa Cameron & Manisha Shah, 2015. "Risk-Taking Behavior in the Wake of Natural Disasters," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 50(2), pages 484-515.
    57. repec:zbw:rwirep:0552 is not listed on IDEAS
    58. Thomas Dohmen & Armin Falk & David Huffman & Uwe Sunde, 2012. "The Intergenerational Transmission of Risk and Trust Attitudes," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 79(2), pages 645-677.
    59. Alessandro Bucciol & Raffaele Miniaci, 2015. "Household Portfolio Risk," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 19(2), pages 739-783.
    60. Lönnqvist, Jan-Erik & Verkasalo, Markku & Walkowitz, Gari & Wichardt, Philipp C., 2015. "Measuring individual risk attitudes in the lab: Task or ask? An empirical comparison," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 254-266.
    61. Lechner, Michael, 2011. "The Estimation of Causal Effects by Difference-in-Difference Methods," Foundations and Trends(R) in Econometrics, now publishers, vol. 4(3), pages 165-224, November.
    62. Eeckhoudt, Louis & Gollier, Christian & Schlesinger, Harris, 1996. "Changes in Background Risk and Risk-Taking Behavior," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(3), pages 683-689, May.
    63. Kimball, Miles S, 1993. "Standard Risk Aversion," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 61(3), pages 589-611, May.
    64. Kim, Young-Il & Lee, Jungmin, 2014. "The long-run impact of a traumatic experience on risk aversion," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 174-186.
    65. David A. Jaeger & Thomas Dohmen & Armin Falk & David Huffman & Uwe Sunde & Holger Bonin, 2010. "Direct Evidence on Risk Attitudes and Migration," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 92(3), pages 684-689, August.
    66. Thomas Dohmen & Armin Falk & Bart H. H. Golsteyn & David Huffman & Uwe Sunde, 2017. "Risk Attitudes Across The Life Course," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 127(605), pages 95-116, October.
    67. Feinberg, Robert M, 1977. "Risk Aversion, Risk, and the Duration of Unemployment," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 59(3), pages 264-271, August.
    68. Schmitz, Hendrik, 2011. "Why are the unemployed in worse health? The causal effect of unemployment on health," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 71-78, January.
    69. Ross, Stephen A, 1981. "Some Stronger Measures of Risk Aversion in the Small and the Large with Applications," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(3), pages 621-638, May.
    70. Schwerdt, Guido & Ichino, Andrea & Ruf, Oliver & Winter-Ebmer, Rudolf & Zweimüller, Josef, 2010. "Does the color of the collar matter? Employment and earnings after plant closure," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 108(2), pages 137-140, August.
    71. Marcus Eliason & Donald Storrie, 2006. "Lasting or Latent Scars? Swedish Evidence on the Long-Term Effects of Job Displacement," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 24(4), pages 831-856, October.
    72. Maarten J. Voors & Eleonora E. M. Nillesen & Philip Verwimp & Erwin H. Bulte & Robert Lensink & Daan P. Van Soest, 2012. "Violent Conflict and Behavior: A Field Experiment in Burundi," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(2), pages 941-964, April.
    73. Kihlstrom, Richard E & Romer, David & Williams, Steve, 1981. "Risk Aversion with Random Initial Wealth," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(4), pages 911-920, June.
    74. L. Eeckhoudt & C. Gollier & H. Schlesinger, 2005. "Economic and financial decisions under risk," Post-Print hal-00325882, HAL.
    75. Bird, Edward J., 2001. "Does the welfare state induce risk-taking?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(3), pages 357-383, June.
    76. Gert G. Wagner & Joachim R. Frick & Jürgen Schupp, 2007. "The German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) – Scope, Evolution and Enhancements," Schmollers Jahrbuch : Journal of Applied Social Science Studies / Zeitschrift für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, vol. 127(1), pages 139-169.
    77. Griliches, Zvi & Regev, Haim, 1995. "Firm productivity in Israeli industry 1979-1988," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 175-203, January.
    78. Charness, Gary & Gneezy, Uri & Imas, Alex, 2013. "Experimental methods: Eliciting risk preferences," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 43-51.
    79. Bucciol, Alessandro & Zarri, Luca, 2015. "The shadow of the past: Financial risk taking and negative life events," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 1-16.
    80. Pannenberg, Markus, 2010. "Risk attitudes and reservation wages of unemployed workers: Evidence from panel data," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 106(3), pages 223-226, March.
    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. Armando N. Meier, 2019. "Emotions, Risk Attitudes, and Patience," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 1041, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    2. Tausch, Franziska & Zumbuehl, Maria, 2018. "Stability of risk attitudes and media coverage of economic news," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 295-310.
    3. Malte Preuss & Juliane Hennecke, 2017. "Biased by Success and Failure: How Unemployment Shapes Stated Locus of Control," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 943, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    4. Ayton, Peter & Bernile, Gennaro & Bucciol, Alessandro & Zarri, Luca, 2020. "The impact of life experiences on risk taking," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    5. Matthias Brachert & Walter Hyll & Abdolkarim Sadrieh, 2020. "Entry into self-employment and individuals’ risk-taking propensities," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 55(4), pages 1057-1074, December.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search
    • J65 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment Insurance; Severance Pay; Plant Closings

    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:zbw:vfsc16:145491. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/vfsocea.html .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.