The Demographics of Labour Turnover: A Comparison of Ordinal Probit and Censored Count Data Models

Abstract

The authors use date collected in 1977 on unemployed residents of West Germany aged 15-54 years old to compare two statistical models used to analyze labor market mobility. "Two classes of statistical models seem appropriate for this type of analysis, the ordinal probit model assuming a latent continuous variable behind the observables, and the count data approach with prominent members as the Poisson and the negative binomial model.... The first point of interest is to explore whether both approaches lead to similar findings.... We outline some approaches...that enable a...researcher to judge the quality of the estimated model....[Then] we compare the performance of the ordinal probit and count data models. Section 2 presents data and hypotheses. Section 3 discusses the econometric methodology. Section 4 contains the empirical results and the model comparisons." (SUMMARY IN FRE)