 Applying for jobs in the lab: The effect of risk attitudes and reference pointsMette T. Damgaard and Justin Sydnor Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), 2019, vol. 79, issue C, 165-179 Abstract: Applying for jobs resembles entering a lottery, where there is an up-front cost of entering and a large potential award gained with some probability. Reference-dependent models predict that the risk attitudes people have toward these types of lotteries will depend on what reference point they use. In this paper, we consider whether a job-application setting in the laboratory can give rise to strong loss aversion and application avoidance. We test for this in a real-effort experiment where we observe application decisions for a job paying a bonus conditional on different levels of an application fee. We also implement a neutral monetary lottery with the same consequential decisions. Our experimental evidence reveals substantial reluctance to take on risk in job applications, but to an extent similar to that found in lottery entry decisions. We do not find support for application avoidance. Keywords: Application avoidance; Job search; Laboratory experiment; Loss aversion; Reference dependence (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:soceco:v:79:y:2019:i:c:p:165-179 DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2019.02.009 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) is currently edited by Pablo Brañas Garza More articles in Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) from Elsevier |
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