Testing the Importance of Search Frictions, Matching, and Reservation Prestige Through Randomized Experiments in Jordan

Matthew Groh (), David McKenzie, Nour Shammout and Tara Vishwanath ()
Additional contact information
Matthew Groh: World Bank
Nour Shammout: University of Michigan
Tara Vishwanath: World Bank

No 8518, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Unemployment rates for tertiary-educated youth in Jordan are high, as is the duration of unemployment. Two randomized experiments in Jordan were used to test different theories that may explain this phenomenon. The first experiment tests the role of search and matching frictions by providing firms and job candidates with an intensive screening and matching service based on educational backgrounds and psychometric assessments. Although over 1,000 matches were made, youth rejected the opportunity to even have an interview in 28 percent of cases, and when a job offer was received, rejected this offer or quickly quit the job 83 percent of the time. A second experiment builds on the first by examining the willingness of educated, unemployed, youth to apply for jobs of varying levels of prestige. We find youth apply to only a small proportion of the job openings they are told about, with application rates higher for higher prestige jobs than lower prestige. Youth fail to show up for the majority of interviews scheduled for low prestige jobs. The results suggest that reservation prestige is an important factor underlying the unemployment of educated Jordanian youth.

Keywords: randomized experiment; Jordan; youth unemployment; reservation prestige; labor market matching; psychometrics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J08 J64 O12 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 43 pages
Date: 2014-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-lab
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Published - published in: IZA Journal of Labor Economics, 2015, 4:7

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp8518.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Testing the importance of search frictions, matching, and reservation prestige through randomized experiments in Jordan (2014)
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:iza:izadps:dp8518

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().