Pure-Chance Jobs versus a Labor Market: The Impact on Careers of a Random Serial Dictatorship for First Job Seekers

Ashna Arora, Leonard Goff and Jonas Hjort

AEA Papers and Proceedings, 2021, vol. 111, 470-75

Abstract: Do workers' first jobs affect their careers? Do such first-job effects (FJEs) vary across worker types? If so, can policy improve upon a "free" labor market by altering initial worker-employer matches? We study these questions using Norway's pre–2013 system of assigning doctors to their first job—residencies—through a random serial dictatorship. This generated individual-level variation in workers' choice sets over employers, which we use as instrumental variables to estimate FJEs. We then decompose workers' preferences over first employers into FJEs-on-earnings and employer "amenity value" components, showing how matches and worker welfare changed in the post–2013 decentralized labor market.

JEL-codes: I11 J41 J44 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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DOI: 10.1257/pandp.20211010

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