Why Does Unemployment Hurt the Employed?: Evidence from the Life Satisfaction Gap Between the Public and the Private Sector
利用德国面板数据和美欧重复截面数据，研究发现私营部门员工的主观幸福感对失业率波动的敏感度远高于公共部门员工，揭示了就业保障差异的作用。
High unemployment rates entail substantial costs to the working population in terms of reduced subjective well-being. This paper studies the importance of individual economic security, in particular job security, by exploiting sector-specific institutional differences in the exposure to economic shocks. Public servants have stricter dismissal protection and face a lower risk of their organization becoming bankrupt than private sector employees. The empirical results from individual panel data for Germany and repeated cross-sectional data for the United States and Europe show that private sector employees' subjective well-being reacts indeed much more sensitive to fluctuations in unemployment rates than public sector employees'.