Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/284308 
Year of Publication: 
2023
Series/Report no.: 
Working Paper No. 958
Publisher: 
Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance, London
Abstract: 
We evaluate the impacts of a randomized job-fair intervention in which jobseekers and employers can meet at low cost. The intervention generates few hires, but it lowers participants' expectations and causes both firms and workers to invest more in search as predicted by a theoretical model; this improves employment outcomes for less educated jobseekers. Through a unique two-sided belief-elicitation survey, we confirm that firms and jobseekers have over-optimistic expectations about the market. This suggests that, beyond slowing down matching, search frictions have a second understudied cost: they entrench inaccurate beliefs, further distorting search strategies and labour-market outcomes.
Subjects: 
job-search strategy
recruitment
matching
expectations
beliefs
reservation wage
youth unemployment
Ethiopia
JEL: 
O18
J22
J24
J61
J64
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
1.7 MB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.