Locus of Control and Job Search Strategies

By Marco Caliendo, D. Cobb-Clark, Arne Uhlendorff. Review of Economics and Statistics, 2010

337 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Standard job search theory assumes that unemployed individuals have perfect information about the effect of their search effort on the job offer arrival rate. We present an alternative model that assumes that each individual has a subjective belief about the impact of her search effort on the job arrival. These beliefs depend in part on an individual's locus of control. We estimate the impact of locus of control on job search behavior using a data set of newly unemployed individuals in Germany. Consistent with our theoretical predictions, we find evidence that individuals with an internal locus of control search more and that individuals who believe that their future outcomes are determined by external factors have lower reservation wages.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, General Health Professions

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bf1424ab166600aba833012a9dc12b7aeed82621

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Citations in the corpus

Unobservable, but unimportant? The relevance of usually unobserved variables for the evaluation of labor market policies☆ (2017, positive): “Several studies find a statistically significant effect of the locus of control on individual earnings (e.g. Andrisani, 1977; Heineck and Anger, 2010; Semykina and Linz, 2007) and job search strategies (e.g. Caliendo et al., 2014; McGee, 2015).”
Learning about job search: A field experiment with job seekers in Germany (2015, positive): “6 in search intensities might also be related to personality factors, such as people’s tendency to consider life outcomes as mainly determined by external vs. internal factors (see Caliendo et al. 2015 as well as McGee 2015).”
The Effects of Unemployment Insurance Benefits: New Evidence and Interpretation (2016, neutral): “A similar idea has been explored by Caliendo et al. (2015), where individuals have different beliefs about the impact of their search effort on the job offer arrival rate.”
Employability and Career Success: Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Reality (2013, positive): “Similarly, Caliendo, Cobb-Clark, and Uhlendorff (2010), in a study of unemployed U.S. workers, found that a one standard deviation increase in internal locus of control was associated with a 5.3% increase in number of job applications submitted, controlling for demographics and employment history.”
Locus of control and the labor market (2015, neutral): “1007/s11205-012-0006-z Caliendo M, Cobb-Clark DA, Uhlendorff A (2013) Locus of control and job search strategies. Rev Econ Stat, forthcoming Caliendo M, Fossen F, Kritikos A (2014) Personality characteristics and the decision to become and stay self-employed.”
How the Perception of Control Influences Unemployed Job Search (2015, positive): “’s (2001) meta-analysis, caliendo et al.’s (forthcoming) finding that more-internal searchers submit more job applications, and mcGee and mcGee’s (2011) finding that internality is positively correlated with search effort in the laboratory.”
Personality, IQ, and Lifetime Earnings (2018, neutral): “Piatek and P a a i t t f r i d D D 𝑌 T a c H 2 T w b inger (2016) argue that for Locus of Control, another facet of personlity, the largest wage effects are indeed due to its effect on educational ttainment.”
Active Labor Market Policies (2016, positive): “Caliendo et al. (2015) show that job seekers with a high locus of control, that is, those who think their destiny is determined by their own acts rather than by external factors, also demonstrate more energetic job-search behavior and have a higher reservation wage.”