Women's job search propensity and selection effect in European labour markets

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explore the main determinants of women's job search propensity and the mechanism underlying the selection effect into labour markets. The analysis compares the European countries, sharing the lowest female activity rates, with the well-developed economies of North Europe, traditionally characterized by the highest levels of female labour force participation. The potential selection bias due to the overlap in some unobserved characteristics is addressed via a bivariate probit model. Significant selection effects in women's job search process of opposite signs are found for Greece, on the one side, and for the Polish and the Norwegian labour markets, on the other one.