Hiring Through Referrals in a Labor Market with Adverse Selection
Hiring Through Referrals in a Labor Market with Adverse Selection

Author: Aurelie Dariel

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

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Information asymmetries can prevent markets from operating efficiently. An important example is the labor market, where employers face uncertainty about the productivity of job candidates. We examine theoretically and with laboratory experiments three key questions related to hiring via referrals when employees have private information about their productivity. First, do firms use employee referrals when there are social ties between a current employee and a future employee? Second, does the existence of social ties and hiring through employee referrals indeed alleviate adverse selection relative to when social ties do not exist? Third, does the existence of social ties have spill-over effects on wages and hiring in competitive labor markets? The answers to all three questions are affirmative. However, despite the identified positive effect of employee referrals, hiring decisions fall short of the (second-best) efficient outcome. We identify risk aversion as a potential reason for this.

Adverse Selection and Assortative Matching in Labor Markets
Adverse Selection and Assortative Matching in Labor Markets

Author: Daniel Ferreira

Publisher:

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 45

ISBN-13:

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We show that adverse selection in the labor market may generate negative assortative matching of workers and firms. In a model in which employers asymmetrically learn about the ability of their workers, high-productivity firms poach mediocre workers, whereas low-productivity firms retain high-ability workers. We show that this flipping property is caused by information asymmetry alone. Our model has a number of positive and normative predictions: External promotions are not an indication of high talent, within-job wage growth is higher in industries with more revenue dispersion, and non-compete clauses are inefficient in industries with significant firm heterogeneity.

Adverse Selection, Asymmetric Information and Discrimination in a Labor Market
Adverse Selection, Asymmetric Information and Discrimination in a Labor Market

Author: Paulo R. A. Loureiro

Publisher:

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

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The main objective of this study is the application of an adverse selection model to verify the existence of discrimination in a competitive labor market caused by asymmetric information. The most important result obtained is when a group of workers with different productivities earn the same wage characterizing discrimination.

Moral Hazard in Health Insurance
Moral Hazard in Health Insurance

Author: Amy Finkelstein

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2014-12-02

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13: 0231538685

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Addressing the challenge of covering heath care expenses—while minimizing economic risks. Moral hazard—the tendency to change behavior when the cost of that behavior will be borne by others—is a particularly tricky question when considering health care. Kenneth J. Arrow’s seminal 1963 paper on this topic (included in this volume) was one of the first to explore the implication of moral hazard for health care, and Amy Finkelstein—recognized as one of the world’s foremost experts on the topic—here examines this issue in the context of contemporary American health care policy. Drawing on research from both the original RAND Health Insurance Experiment and her own research, including a 2008 Health Insurance Experiment in Oregon, Finkelstein presents compelling evidence that health insurance does indeed affect medical spending and encourages policy solutions that acknowledge and account for this. The volume also features commentaries and insights from other renowned economists, including an introduction by Joseph P. Newhouse that provides context for the discussion, a commentary from Jonathan Gruber that considers provider-side moral hazard, and reflections from Joseph E. Stiglitz and Kenneth J. Arrow. “Reads like a fireside chat among a group of distinguished, articulate health economists.” —Choice

Uncertainty, Pay for Performance and Adverse Selection in a Competitive Labor Market
Uncertainty, Pay for Performance and Adverse Selection in a Competitive Labor Market

Author: Felipe Balmaceda

Publisher:

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

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This paper develops a new rationale for the emergence of pay-for-performance contracts. The labor market is competitive, workers are risk averse and firms risk neutral. The paper shows that in stable environments more productive workers self-select into pay-for-performance jobs because risk is less costly to them than to their less productive counterparts which prefer fixed-salary contracts. When uncertainty is sufficiently large a pooling equilibrium emerges in which all workers have pay-for-performance contracts, thereby reducing more productive workers' costs of being pooled with less productive workers. The model explains several empirical regularities unaccounted for by alternative models, such as markets where all observed contracts involve pay-for-performance, and also that such markets are more likely to emerge in highly uncertain environments.

A Test of Adverse Selection in the Market for Experienced Workers
A Test of Adverse Selection in the Market for Experienced Workers

Author: Kevin Lang

Publisher:

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 39

ISBN-13:

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We show that in labor market models with adverse selection, otherwise observationally equivalent workers will experience less wage growth following a period in which they change jobs than following a period in which they do not. We find little or no evidence to support this prediction. In most specifications the coefficient has the opposite sign, sometimes statistically significantly so. When consistent with the prediction, the estimated effects are small and statistically insignificant. We consistently reject large effects in the predicted direction. We argue informally that our results are also problematic for a broader class of models of competitive labor markets.