Opening the Black Box of the Matching Function: the Power of Words / Ioana Marinescu, Ronald Wolthoff.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Marinescu, Ioana.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Wolthoff, Ronald.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w22508.

NBER working paper series no. w22508

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Opening the Black Box of the Matching Function

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2016.

Summary:

How do employers attract the right workers? How important are posted wages vs. other job characteristics? Using data from the leading job board CareerBuilder.com, we show that most vacancies do not post wages, and, for those that do, job titles explain more than 90% of the wage variance. Job titles also explain more than 80% of the across-vacancies variance in the education and experience of applicants. Finally, failing to control for job titles leads to a spurious negative elasticity of labor supply. Thus, our results uncover the previously undocumented power of words in the job matching process.

Notes:

Print version record

August 2016.