@TechReport{iza:izadps:dp8644, author={Köllő, János and Czafit, Bence}, title={Labor Market Careers Before and After Incarceration}, year={2014}, month={Nov}, institution={Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)}, address={Bonn}, type={IZA Discussion Paper}, number={8644}, url={https://www.iza.org/publications/dp8644}, abstract={We study the entry to formal employment and earnings of a large sample of convicts released from Hungarian prisons in 2002-2008. We identify the effect of the prison service on post-release careers by exploiting differences in the timing of incarceration, on the one hand, and estimating fixed effects models, on the other. For convicts with a single prison spell, we find initially negative effect on employment that turns positive after about one year while the impact on wages is permanently negative. A comparison with recidivists, for whom the employment effect is negative and the wage effect is weaker, suggests that these results are driven by a drop in the reservation wages of 'converted' criminals rather than the lack of discrimination. This reading is supported by further data showing that the ex-inmates, on average, make increased effort to find legitimate sources of living and support to finding jobs.}, keywords={wage loss;unemployment;incarceration;discrimination}, }