InsTED member, Simone Moriconi, is organizing a session at the 3rd International ESS Conference in Lausanne (CH), 13-15 July, 2016. Paper submissions are welcome. Here is the session proposal:
Abstract submissions are welcome on “Social Preferences, Institutions and Performance in the Labour Market” within the theme “labour market, work and family“ at the 3rd International ESS Conference in Lausanne (CH), 13-15 July, 2016.
An extensive economics literature associates the bad functioning of the labor market to the persistence of inefficient institutions (unemployment insurance, labor taxation, unionization) and adverse economic shocks. A related strand points out that aggregate employment outcomes may reflect underlying individual preferences. In-work and job search effort depend on the opportunity cost of enjoying leisure in terms of foregone income. This cost is subjective and can be high e.g. in the presence of a social norm of unemployment. Individual perceptions regarding job insecurity are important predictors of own employment probabilities. Also, individuals’ attitudes towards inequality and fairness as opposed to preferences for hard work, personal responsibility and merit may shape policies, thus the characteristics of a country’s institutions. Finally, individual risk attitudes shape preferences too, and the view regarding government’s commitment towards disadvantaged worker categories.
Notwithstanding their importance, it is widely acknowledged that individual preferences are made of two components. The first component is idiosyncratic, affected by the social and economic context where an individual lives and responsive to external shocks. The second component, is structural, deeply rooted in the past, and may be inherited from past generations through “culture”, thus exogenous to other individual decisions e.g. labour supply.
Papers in this session will have to tackle the issues sketched above, and will try to answer the following questions. What is the role of individual preferences for important decisions in the labour market (e.g. labour supply, job-search, job mobility etc.)? What is the relationship between preferences and institutions? Does the evolution of preferences shape individual views regarding government intervention in the institutional setting? How does the idiosyncratic component of preferences matter as compared with deep and culturally-transmitted preferences in determining institutional and economic outcomes in the labour market?
On line submission tool available here
Closing date for abstracts submissions: 17th January, 2016.
Notification of acceptance: early March.