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Rainer Winkelmann

University of Zurich, Switzerland, and IZA, Germany

The diversity of topics covered by the IZA World of Labor series is impressive. Anyone interested in labor market developments and policies, be it practitioners, students or researchers, will find here a treasure of up-to-date evidence and informed opinions

IZA World of Labor role

Author

Current position

Professor of Economics, Chair for Statistics and Empirical Economic Research, University of Zurich

Research interest

Econometrics, in particular models for discrete and panel data; work, family and well-being; applied social policy analysis.

Website

http://bit.ly/Winkelmann_IZApage

Past positions

Visiting Professor, Harvard University, Fall 2012; Visiting Professor, University of California, Los Angeles, Winter 2007; Senior Lecturer, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand (1995–1999).

Qualifications

Dr. oec. publ., University of Munich, 1993.

Selected publications

  • “Why are the unemployed so unhappy? Evidence from panel data.” Economica 65:257 (1998): 1–15 (with L. Winkelmann).Econometric Analysis of Count Data. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2000.

  • “Health care reform and the number of doctor visits—an econometric analysis.” Journal of Applied Econometrics 19:4 (2004): 455–472.

  • “Conspicuous consumption and satisfaction.” Journal of Economic Psychology 33 (2012): 183–191.

article(s)

  • Counting on count data models

    Quantitative policy evaluation can benefit from a rich set of econometric methods for analyzing count data

    Rainer Winkelmann, May 2015
    Often, economic policies are directed toward outcomes that are measured as counts. Examples of economic variables that use a basic counting scale are number of children as an indicator of fertility, number of doctor visits as an indicator of health care demand, and number of days absent from work as an indicator of employee shirking. Several econometric methods are available for analyzing such data, including the Poisson and negative binomial models. They can provide useful insights that cannot be obtained from standard linear regression models. Estimation and interpretation are illustrated in two empirical examples.
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  • Unemployment and happiness

    Successful policies for helping the unemployed need to confront the adverse effects of unemployment on feelings of life satisfaction

    Rainer Winkelmann, October 2014
    Many studies document a large negative effect of unemployment on happiness. Recent research has looked into factors related to impacts on happiness, such as adaptation, social work norms, social capital, religious beliefs, and psychological resources. Getting unemployed people back to work can do more for their happiness than compensating them for doing nothing. But not all unemployed people are equally unhappy. Understanding the differences holds the key to designing effective policies, for helping the unemployed back into work, and for more evenly distributing the burden of unemployment resulting from economic restructuring.
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