IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/econjl/v133y2023i649p258-280..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

‘I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For’: Evidence of Directed Search from a Field Experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Haoran He
  • David Neumark
  • Qian Weng

Abstract

We explore the impact of wage offers on job applications, testing implications of the directed search model and trying to distinguish it from random search. We use a field experiment conducted on a Chinese job board, with real jobs for which we randomly vary the wage offers across three ranges. We find that higher wage offers raise application rates overall, which is consistent with directed search, but can also arise with random search. We also find that higher wage offers raise application rates for job seekers with wage offers above reservation wages and that—among the latter—the increase in application rates is stronger for those with higher reservation wages. The latter two types of evidence are consistent with directed search, but not random search. Hence, our evidence lends support to directed search models.

Suggested Citation

  • Haoran He & David Neumark & Qian Weng, 2023. "‘I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For’: Evidence of Directed Search from a Field Experiment," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 133(649), pages 258-280.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:econjl:v:133:y:2023:i:649:p:258-280.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ej/ueac066
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:econjl:v:133:y:2023:i:649:p:258-280.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press or the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/resssea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.