IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/20891.html

Who Gets Hired? The Strength of Weak Ties and the Signaling of Strong Ties

Author

Listed:
  • Safi, Shahir
  • Zenou, Yves

Abstract

This paper presents a model of referrals in which strong ties serve as a signaling mechanism, allowing employees to convey private information about referred workers. Matching occurs through three channels: strong ties (partially informative), weak ties (uninformative but frictionless), and formal screening in the market (fully informative but frictional). Low-skill workers use weak ties to avoid revealing their type, helping reconcile two stylized facts: Granovetter1973's strength of weak ties and the prevalence of referrals in low-skill jobs. The model also reveals a complementarity between weak and strong ties: conditional on having a strong-tie offer, returns to weak ties are positive and increasing in worker skill.

Suggested Citation

  • Safi, Shahir & Zenou, Yves, 2025. "Who Gets Hired? The Strength of Weak Ties and the Signaling of Strong Ties," CEPR Discussion Papers 20891, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20891
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP20891
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    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:cpr:ceprdp:20891. 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: CEPR (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://cepr.org/ .

    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.