IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/nbr/nberch/13719.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Who Gets Hired? The Importance of Competition among Applicants

In: Firms and the Distribution of Income: The Roles of Productivity and Luck

Author

Listed:
  • Edward P. Lazear
  • Kathryn L. Shaw
  • Christopher T. Stanton

Abstract

Being hired into a job depends not only on one’s own skill but also on that of other applicants. When another able applicant applies, a well-suited worker may be forced into unemployment or into accepting an inferior job. A model of this process defines over- and underqualification and provides predictions on its prevalence and on the wages of mismatched workers. It also implies that unemployment is concentrated among the least skilled workers, while vacancies are concentrated among high-skilled jobs. Four data sets are used to confirm the implications and establish that the hiring probability is low when competing applicants are able.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Edward P. Lazear & Kathryn L. Shaw & Christopher T. Stanton, 2015. "Who Gets Hired? The Importance of Competition among Applicants," NBER Chapters, in: Firms and the Distribution of Income: The Roles of Productivity and Luck, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberch:13719
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Laura K. Gee, 2019. "The More You Know: Information Effects on Job Application Rates in a Large Field Experiment," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(5), pages 2077-2094, May.
    2. Kuhn, Peter & Shen, Kailing & Zhang, Shuo, 2020. "Gender-targeted job ads in the recruitment process: Facts from a Chinese job board," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    3. Delfino, Alexia, 2021. "Breaking Gender Barriers: Experimental Evidence on Men in Pink-Collar Jobs," IZA Discussion Papers 14083, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Chen Cohen & Ori Zax, 2022. "Human capital acquisition as a signaling device in promotion competition," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 73(2), pages 550-566, May.
    5. Jason Anastasopoulos & George J. Borjas & Gavin G. Cook & Michael Lachanski, 2018. "Job Vacancies, the Beveridge Curve, and Supply Shocks: The Frequency and Content of Help-Wanted Ads in Pre- and Post-Mariel Miami," NBER Working Papers 24580, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Jed DeVaro & Oliver Gürtler, 2020. "Strategic shirking in competitive labor markets: A general model of multi‐task promotion tournaments with employer learning," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(2), pages 335-376, April.
    7. Tobias Lehmann & Camille Terrier & Rafael Lalive, 2023. "Costs and Benefits of Congestion in Two-Sided Markets: Evidence from the Dating Market," Working Papers 964, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    8. Julian Johnsen & Hyejin Ku & Kjell G. Salvanes, 2023. "Competition and Career Advancement," CESifo Working Paper Series 10577, CESifo.
    9. Francesco Bogliacino & Rafael Charris & Camilo Gómez & Felipe Montealegre & Cristiano Codagnone, 2021. "Expert endorsement and the legitimacy of public policy. Evidence from Covid19 mitigation strategies," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(3-4), pages 394-415, April.
    10. Francesca Melillo, 2023. "Going From Entrepreneur Back to Employee: Employer Type, Task Variety, and Job Satisfaction," GREDEG Working Papers 2023-21, Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France.
    11. Ben Ost & Weixiang Pan & Douglas A. Webber, 2023. "College Networks and Re-employment of Displaced Workers," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2023-043, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    12. Victor Alfonso Naya & Guillaume Bied & Philippe Caillou & Bruno Crépon & Christophe Gaillac & Elia Pérennes & Michèle Sebag, 2021. "Designing labor market recommender systems: the importance of job seeker preferences and competition," Post-Print hal-03540319, HAL.
    13. Jeroen Mahieu & Francesca Melillo & Peter Thompson, 2022. "The long‐term consequences of entrepreneurship: Earnings trajectories of former entrepreneurs," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(2), pages 213-236, February.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • J01 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics: General
    • J2 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor
    • J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure
    • J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J6 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers
    • J62 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Job, Occupational and Intergenerational Mobility; Promotion
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search
    • M5 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics
    • M51 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Firm Employment Decisions; Promotions

    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:nbr:nberch:13719. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.