 Search, effort, and locus of controlJournal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2016, vol. 126, issue PA, 89-101 Abstract: We test the hypothesis that locus of control influences search by affecting beliefs about the efficacy of search effort in a laboratory experiment. Consistent with this hypothesis, we find that reservation wages and effort are increasing in the belief that one's efforts influence outcomes when subjects are not told how search effort affects search outcomes but are unrelated to these locus of control beliefs when subjects know the relationship between effort and search outcomes. This difference in the relationship between locus of control and search behavior across treatments cannot be explained by unmeasured skill or effort costs as the search technology and offer distribution do not vary across treatments. Only the scope for locus of control to influence beliefs differs and can explain the observed difference across treatments. Keywords: Locus of control; Reservation wages; Labor market search; Experiment (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:eee:jeborg:v:126:y:2016:i:pa:p:89-101 DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2016.03.001 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D. More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier |
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