In this project, we use Swedish data from military enlistment to study the importance of different personality traits for wages, earnings and unemployment.
| Project manager: |
Erik Lindqvist, Stockholm School of Economics and IFN |
| Participants: |
Erik Grönqvist, IFAU, Roine Vestman, Stockholms universitet
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Job ads often stress the importance of personal traits such as ability to cope with stress, self-discipline and social skills. Yet the empirical evidence in favor of the view that personal traits other than intelligence influence labor market outcomes is surprisingly weak. We argue that this is due to a lack of valid measures of personality. Typically, the previous literature has used personality measures based on self-reported questionnaires. In this project, we instead consider a measure of personality based on a personal interview by a psychologist.
Publications
Grönqvist, Erik and Erik Lindqvist (2015). The Making of a Manager: Evidence from Military Officer Training. IFN Working Paper No. 1069. Published in Journal of Labor Economics, 34 (4), 869-898, 2016. Link
Lindqvist, Erik (2010). Height and Leadership. IFN Working Paper No. 835. Published in Review of Economics and Statistics, 94 (4), 1191-1196, 2012. Link
Lindqvist, Erik and Roine Vestman (2009). The Labor Market Returns to Cognitive and Noncognitive Ability: Evidence from the Swedish Enlistment. IFN Working Paper No. 794. Published in American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 3 (1), 101-128, 2011. Link