Integrating Mobile Phone Technologies into Labor-Market Intermediation: A Multi-Treatment Experimental Design

Ana Dammert, Jose Galdo and Virgilio Galdo

No 9012, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This study investigates the causal impacts of integrating mobile phone technologies into traditional public labor-market intermediation services on employment outcomes. By providing faster, cheaper and up-to-date information on job vacancies via SMS, mobile phone technologies might affect the rate at which offers arrive as well as the probability of receiving a job offer. We implement a social experiment with multiple treatments that allows us to investigate both the role of information channels (digital versus non-digital) and information sets (restricted [public] versus unrestricted [public/private]). The results show positive and significant short-term effects on employment for public labor-market intermediation. While the impacts from traditional labor-market intermediation are not large enough to be statistically significant, the unrestricted digital treatment group shows statistically significant short-term employment effects. As for potential matching efficiency gains, the results suggest no statistically significant effects associated with either information channels or information sets.

Keywords: ICT; labor-market intermediation; mobile phones; field experiments; Peru (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I3 J2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 52 pages
Date: 2015-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-ict and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

Published - published in: IZA Journal of Labor and Development, 2015, 4 (11), 1-26

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp9012.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Integrating mobile phone technologies into labor-market intermediation: a multi-treatment experimental design (2015)
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:dp9012

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 ().