New Evidence on Cross-Country Differences in Job Satisfaction Using Anchoring Vignettes.

This paper presents results on cross-country comparison of job sat- <p> isfaction across seven EU countries taking into account that people in <p> di¤erent countries may perceive subjective questions di¤erently. We <p> apply a chopit model approach where the threshold parameters in an <p> ordered probit model are re-scaled through anchoring vignettes. Com- <p> pared to a traditional ordered probit model, which yields the familiar <p> result that Denmark is ranked in the very top followed by Finland, <p> the country ranking is altered when the chopit model is applied. In <p> this case, the Scandinavian countries are ranked somewhat lower while <p> workers from the Netherlands are found to have the highest level of job <p> satisfaction. These results suggest that cultural di¤erences in the way <p> people perceive subjective questions about satisfaction make simple <p> cross-country comparison misleading.