Krueger, Alan B. and David Schkade. 2008. “Sorting in the Labor Market: Do Gregarious Workers Flock to Interactive Jobs?” Journal of Human Resources 43(4): 859–883.
This paper tests a central implication of the theory of equalizing differences, that workers sort into jobs with different attributes based on their preferences. We present evidence from four new time-use data sets for the United States and France suggesting that workers who are more gregarious, as revealed by their behavior when they are not working, tend to be employed in jobs that involve more social interactions. We also find that workers report substantially higher levels of job satisfaction and net affect while at work if their jobs entail frequent interactions with coworkers and other desirable working conditions.
Alan B. Krueger is Bendheim Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University. David Schkade is Jerome Katzin Endowed Chair at the University of California, San Diego. This paper was prepared for a conference in honor of Reuben Gronau’s retirement, December 19–20, 2005 at Hebrew University. The authors thank Elaine Liu, Eleanor Choi and Tatyana Deryugina for helpful research assistance, Edward Lazear and seminar participants at Hebrew University, Hamilton College, and NBER for helpful comments, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the National Institute on Aging for research support. The data used in this article can be obtained from the date of publication through 2011 from Alan Krueger, Industrial Relations Section, Firestone Library, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08544, akrueger@princeton.edu.