All Studies
The Direct and Indirect Effects of Online Job Search AdviceIZA Institute of Labor Ecoomics, Discussion Paper Series, IZA DP No. 15830- Steffen Altmann,
- Anita M. Glenny,
- Robert Mahlstedt,
- Alexander Sebald
We study how online job search advice affects the job search strategies and labor market outcomes of unemployed workers. In a large-scale field experiment, we provide job seekers with vacancy information and occupational recommendations through an online dashboard. A clustered randomization procedure with regionally varying treatment intensities allows us to account for treatment spillovers. Our results show that online advice is highly effective when the share of treated workers is relatively low: in regions where less than 50% of job seekers are exposed to the treatment, working hours and earnings of treated job seekers increase by 8.5–9.5% in the year after the intervention. At the same time, we find substantial negative spillovers on other treated job seekers for higher treatment intensities, resulting from increased competition between treated job seekers who apply for similar vacancies.
Uploaded by: Michelle Mercer
- How can AI improve search and matching? Evidence from 59 million personalized job recommendations
- Thomas Le Barbanchon,
- Lena Hensvik and Roland Rathelot
We explore how Artificial Intelligence can be leveraged to help frictional markets to clear. We design a collaborative-filtering machine-learning job recommender system that uses job seekers’ click history to generate relevant personalised job recommendations. We deploy it at scale on the largest online job board in Sweden, and design a clustered two-sided randomised experiment to evaluate its impact on job search and labor-market outcomes. Combining platform data with unemployment and employment registers, we find that treated job seekers are more likely to click and apply to recommended jobs, and have 0.6% higher employment within the 6 months following first exposure to recommendations. At the job-worker pair level, we document that recommending a vacancy to a job seeker increases the probability to work at this workplace by 5%. Leveraging the two-sided vacancy-worker randomisation or the market-level randomisation, we find limited congestion effects. We find that employment effects are larger for workers that are less-educated, unemployed, and have initially a large geographic scope of search, for jobs that are attached to several jobs, and are relatively older. Results also suggest that recommendations expanding the occupational scope yield higher effects.
Uploaded by: Michele Belot
- The More You Know: Information Effects on Job Application Rates in a Large Field ExperimentIZA Institute of Labor Ecoomics, Discussion Paper Series, IZA DP No. 10372
- Laura K. Gee
This paper presents the results from a 2.3 million person field experiment that varies whether or not a job seeker sees the number of applicants for a job posting on a large job posting website, LinkedIn. This intervention increases the likelihood that a person will finish an application by 3.5%. Women have a larger increase in their likelihood of finishing an application than men. Overall, adding this information to a job posting may offer a light-touch way to both increase application rates and alter the diversity of the applicant pool.
Uploaded by: Michelle Mercer
- Can a Website Bring Unemployment Down? Experimental Evidence from FranceNational Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 29914 DOI 10.3386/w29914
- Aïcha Ben Dhia,
- Bruno Crépon,
- Esther Mbih,
- Louise Paul-Delvaux,
- Bertille Picard & Vincent Pons
We evaluate the impact of an online platform giving job seekers tips to improve their search and recommendations of new occupations and locations to target, based on their personal data and labor market data. Our experiment used an encouragement design and was conducted in collaboration with the French public employment agency. It includes 212,277 individuals. We find modest effects on search methods: the users of the platform adopt some of its tips and they are more likely to use resources provided by public employment services. However, following individual trajectories for 18 months after the intervention, we do not observe any impact on time spent looking for a job, search scope (occupational or geographical), or self-reported well-being. Most importantly, we do not find any effect on any employment outcome, whether in the short or medium run. We conclude that the enthusiasm around the potential for job-search assistance platforms to help reduce unemployment should be toned down.
Uploaded by: Michelle Mercer
- Encouraging and Directing Job Search: Direct and Spillover Effects in a Large Scale ExperimentBanque de France Working Paper No 900
- Luc Behaghel,
- Sofia Dromundo,
- Marc Gurgand,
- Yagan Hazard and Thomas Zuber
We analyze the employment effects of directing job seekers' applications towards establishments likely to recruit, building upon an existing Internet platform developed by the French public employment service. Our two-sided randomization design, with about 1.2 million job seekers and 100,000 establishments, allows us to measure precisely the effects of the recommender system at hand. Our randomized encouragement to use the system induces a 2% increase in job finding rates among women. This effect is due to an activation effect (increased search effort, stronger for women than men), but also to a targeting effect by which treated men and women were more likely to be hired by the firms that were specifically recommended to them. In a second step, we analyze whether these partial equilibrium effects translate into positive effects on aggregate employment. Drawing on the recent literature on the econometrics of interference effects, we estimate that by redirecting the search effort of some job seekers outside their initial job market, we reduced congestion in slack markets. Estimates suggest that this effect is only partly offset by the increased competition in initially tight markets, so that the intervention increases aggregate job finding rates.
Uploaded by: Michelle Mercer
- Learning about job search: A field experiment with job seekers in GermanyJournal of Public Economics Volume 164, August 2018, Pages 33-49
- Steffen Altmann,
- Armin Falk,
- Simon Jäger,
- Florian Zimmermann
We conduct a large-scale field experiment in the German labor market to investigate how information provision affects job seekers' employment prospects and labor market outcomes. Individuals assigned to the treatment group of our experiment received a brochure that informed them about job search strategies and the consequences of unemployment, and motivated them to actively look for new employment. We study the causal impact of the brochure by comparing labor market outcomes of treated and untreated job seekers in administrative data containing comprehensive information on individuals' employment status and earnings. The effects of our treatment tend to be positive, but concentrated among job seekers who are at risk of being unemployed for an extended period of time. Specifically, treatment effects in our overall sample are moderately positive on average, but mostly insignificant. At the same time, we do observe pronounced and statistically significant effects for individuals who exhibit an increased risk of long-term unemployment. For this group, the brochure increases employment and earnings in the year after the intervention by roughly 4%. Given the low cost of the intervention, our findings indicate that targeted information provision can be a highly effective policy tool in the labor market.
Uploaded by: Michelle Mercer
- Do the Long-Term Unemployed Benefit from Automated Occupational Advice during Online Job Search?IZA Institute of Labor Economics, Discussion Paper Series, IZA DP No. 15452
- Michèle Belot,
- Philipp Kircher,
- Paul Muller
In a randomized field experiment, we provide personalized suggestions about suitable alternative occupations to long-term unemployed job seekers in the UK. The suggestions are automatically generated, integrated in an online job search platform, and fed into actual search queries. Effects on the primary pre-registered outcomes of “finding a stable job” and “reaching a cumulative earnings threshold” are positive, are significant among those who searched at least once, and are more pronounced for those who are longer unemployed. Treated individuals include more occupations in their search and find more jobs in recommended occupations.
Uploaded by: Michelle Mercer
- Providing Advice to Jobseekers at Low Cost: An Experimental Study on Online AdviceThe Review of Economic Studies, Volume 86, Issue 4, July 2019, Pages 1411–1447,
- Michèle Belot,
- Philipp Kircher,
- Paul Muller
We develop and evaluate experimentally a novel tool that redesigns the job search process by providing tailored advice at low cost. We invited jobseekers to our computer facilities for twelve consecutive weekly sessions to search for real jobs on our web interface. For one-half, instead of relying on their own search criteria, we use readily available labour market data to display relevant alternative occupations and associated jobs. The data indicate that this broadens the set of jobs they consider and increases their job interviews especially for participants who otherwise search narrowly and have been unemployed for a few months.
Uploaded by: Michelle Mercer