How Do Employers Use Compensation History?: Evidence from a Field Experiment

Moshe A. Barach and John Horton

No 6559, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We report the results of a field experiment in which treated employers could not observe the compensation history of their job applicants. Treated employers responded by evaluating more applicants, and evaluating those applicants more intensively. They also responded by changing what kind of workers they evaluated: treated employers evaluated workers with 7% lower past average wages and hired workers with 16% lower past average wages. Conditional upon bargaining, workers hired by treated employers struck better wage bargains for themselves. Using a structural model of bidding and hiring, we find that the selection effects we observe would also occur in equilibrium.

Keywords: field experiments; compensation; search and screening (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J01 J30 M50 M51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-hrm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Working Paper: How Do Employers Use Compensation History?: Evidence From a Field Experiment (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6559

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