Labor Demand Shocks, Unemployment, and Suicide: Evidence from Provinces across Iran

Authors

1 Department of Economics, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, USA.

2 Rawls College of Business, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA.

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between the unemployment rate and suicide rate using data from all provinces of Iran and over the years 2009-2015. We exploit the variations in national industry-specific labor demand changes and province-level industry-composition as plausibly exogenous shocks to the province-level employment growth. Using a 2SLS-IV approach, we find that a 1 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate is associated with 0.9 and 0.4 higher incidences of suicide attempt and death per 100,000 population, respectively. Although both OLS and 2SLS-IV approach reveals consistent and statistically significant results, the marginal effects of the 2SLS-IV approach are larger, implying that Endogeneity issues underbias the OLS results of the relationship between unemployment rates and suicide rates.
 

Keywords

Iranian Economic Review

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 29 May 2021

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