The impact of economic crisis on human behavior and labor market

The main objective of this thesis is to observe the impact of economic crisis on job satisfaction. It considers the impacts of the European Sovereign Debt Crisis on job satisfaction, as they are captured by the GDP growth, changes in unemployment and inflation rate, in four countries: Sweden, Denmark, Greece and Spain. Using data from the European Social Survey (ESS) for years 2002 to 2012 and applying them into the ordered probit model with fixed effects, it investigates the impact of economic crisis on job satisfaction. It uses two dependent variables of categorical form (happiness and life satisfaction) and looks into changes in the three economic indicators that are directly influenced by the crisis. We find that the ongoing economic crisis in Greece and Spain produces several impacts on population's job satisfaction, whereas Sweden and Denmark are not affected. The basic argument is that the crisis will affect less the levels of reported job satisfaction in the nations that are more willing to protect the unemployed people. Results imply that right after the start of the crisis, GDP and changes in unemployment rate affect negatively job satisfaction. The change though in inflation rate did not find to have an important impact on job satisfaction. Consistent with these, the present thesis reveals that the impacts of the ongoing crisis on job satisfaction is not uniform, as evident by the different pattern of outcomes coming to the spotlight for the job satisfaction.