Jobseekers' Beliefs about Comparative Advantage and (Mis)Directed Search
Worker sorting into tasks and occupations has long been recognized as an important feature of labor markets. But this sorting may be inefficient if jobseekers have imperfect information about their skills and therefore apply to jobs that poorly match their skills. To test this idea, we run two field experiments that give young South African jobseekers information on their results from standardized assessments of job-relevant skills. The information redirects jobseekers’ search toward jobs that value skills where they score relatively highly, without raising their search effort. This also substantially raises earnings, consistent with inefficient sorting due to imperfect in-formation
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