Perceived Returns to Job Search
Abi Adams-Prassl,
Teodora Boneva,
Marta Golin and
Christopher Rauh
Janeway Institute Working Papers from Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge
Abstract:
In this paper we provide the first evidence on workers’ perceptions of the returns to job search effort. The perceived job finding probability is nearly linear in hours searched and only slightly concave for most respondents. While workers are overoptimistic about the probability of receiving a job offer conditional on any search, they perceive the marginal return to additional search hours as positive but comparably low. Job seekers receiving an offer update their perceived returns upwards, while others’ beliefs regress towards the direction of the mean. We find little evidence that the novel aspects of the pandemic recession have fundamentally changed workers’ motivations for job search: that an existing job is expected to end or has unsatisfactory pay are the primary motives for on-the-job search. On the contrary, workers’ ability to do their tasks from home is not a strong predictor of job search nor a significant motive for switching occupations.
Keywords: Job search; Perceived returns; Working from home; Covid-19; Subjective beliefs; Reservation wage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J62 J64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-05-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
Note: cr542
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)
Downloads: (external link)
https://www.janeway.econ.cam.ac.uk/working-paper-pdfs/jiwp2211.pdf
Related works:
Journal Article: Perceived returns to job search (2023) 
Working Paper: Perceived Returns to Job Search (2022) 
Working Paper: Perceived Returns to Job Search (2022) 
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cam:camjip:2211
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in Janeway Institute Working Papers from Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jake Dyer ().