 Social networks, employment and worker discouragement: Evidence from South AfricaJustine Burns, Susan Godlonton and Malcolm Keswell Labour Economics, 2010, vol. 17, issue 2, 336-344 Abstract: Social networks are increasingly being recognized as having an important influence on labour market outcomes, since they facilitate the exchange of job related information. Access to information about job opportunities as well as perceptions about the buoyancy of the labour market depend critically on the social structures and the social networks to which labour market participants belong. In this paper, we examine the impact of information externalities generated through network membership on labour market status. Using Census data from South Africa, a country characterized by high levels of unemployment and worker discouragement, we adopt an econometric approach that aims to minimise the problems of omitted variable bias that have plagued many previous studies of the impact of social networks. Our results suggest that social networks may enhance employment probabilities by an additional 3-12%, and that failure to adequately control for omitted variables would lead to substantial over-estimates of the network co-efficient. In contrast, the impact of social networks on reducing worker discouragement is much smaller, at between 1 and 2%. Keywords: Unemployment; Job-search; Discouraged; worker; South; Africa; Social; networks (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:labeco:v:17:y:2010:i:2:p:336-344 Access Statistics for this article Labour Economics is currently edited by A. Ichino More articles in Labour Economics from Elsevier |
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