Incentives and Behavior in Health and Labor Markets

This thesis will deal with monetary and non-monetary incentives on the labour market. In addition to standard wage incentives, also other incentives (non-wage attributes) seem to be important for workers and job searchers. Using data from the panel study “Labour Market and Social Security” (PASS) together with administrative data I will analyse how non-wage attributes relate to each other and how they shape behaviour of agents in the market. Therefore, questions on non-wage attributes have been included in the PASS survey in the years 2016 and 2017. There are plans to include them in 2018 again. The PASS provides an excellent basis for research in this area since it already contains detailed information on labour market experience, job quality and history for around 15.000 individuals. I will work on this project together with Iris Kesternich and Heiner Schumacher who were successful in the call for questionnaire modules by the federal employment agency. In addition, they received a C1 grant with the title 'Work Meaning and Labour Supply” for this project. One particularly important part of the entire project is an incentivized experiment to which PASS respondents are invited. The experiment will shed light on the willingness to take up a job and on reservation wages. Here I will analyse perseverance of study participants and relate it to their labour market outcomes.