 Assessing the effectiveness of workers' selection exams: the case of Banca d'ItaliaNo 1515, Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) from Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area Abstract: High-stakes exams can be used to rank and select candidates for job openings, and the ability of successful candidates hinges on the design of the exam. I propose a method for modelling candidates' performance in order to assess how effective the exam is at selecting high-ability candidates - defined as those more likely to provide correct answers after considering the observable characteristics of the candidates, their propensity to answer and the difficulty of the questions asked. I apply this method to the competitive exam used by the Bank of Italy in its hiring practices. This also offers an interesting case study on discrimination in hiring, as the selection rate for women is lower than that for men. The results suggest that the exam tends to select those candidates possessing a higher level of ability. Finally, some simulations show how certain modifications to the exam structure could potentially increase the average ability of the selected candidates. Keywords: ability; gender discrimination; efficiency; high-stakes exams; unobserved heterogeneity (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bdi:wptemi:td_1515_26 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) from Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area Contact information at EDIRC. |
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