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Loss aversion in the trade-off between wages and commuting distances

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  • Dauth, Wolfgang
  • Haller, Peter

Abstract

We exploit administrative data on exact commuting distances for a large sample of German employees and study the relation of commuting and wages. We find that it requires 1.5 times as much money in terms of higher wages for job changers to accept an increase of their commute as compared to their willingness to pay for a reduction by the same distance. This provides non-experimental evidence for loss aversion. One third of this can be attributed to sorting of workers into certain firms at various distances and the remainder to a match-specific wage component that workers and firms bargain over.

Suggested Citation

  • Dauth, Wolfgang & Haller, Peter, 2019. "Loss aversion in the trade-off between wages and commuting distances," VfS Annual Conference 2019 (Leipzig): 30 Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall - Democracy and Market Economy 203611, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:vfsc19:203611
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    commuting; loss aversion; marginal willingness to pay; job search;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D90 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - General
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search
    • R12 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity; Interregional Trade (economic geography)
    • R40 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Transportation Economics - - - General

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