Risk Aversion and Job Mobility

Job mobility is inherently risky as workers have limited ex ante information about
the quality of outside jobs. Using a large longitudinal Dutch dataset, which includes
data on risk preferences elicited through (incentivized) experiments, we examine the
relation between risk aversion and job mobility. The results for men show that risk
averse workers are less likely to move to other jobs. For women, the evidence that
risk aversion affects job mobility is weak. Our empirical findings indicate that the
negative relation between risk aversion and job mobility is driven by the job
acceptance rather than the search effort decision.