Anonymity or Distance? Job Search and Labour Market Exclusion in a Growing African City

Girum Abebe, A Stefano Caria, Marcel Fafchamps, Paolo Falco, Simon Franklin and Simon Quinn

No 2018-12, CSAE Working Paper Series from Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford

Abstract: We show that helping young job-seekers to signal their skills to employers can generate large and persistent improvements in labour market outcomes. We do this by comparing an intervention that improves the ability to signal skills (the ‘job application workshop’) to a transport subsidy treatment designed to reduce the cost of job search. We find that in the short-run both interventions have large positive effects on the probability of finding formal jobs. The workshop also increases the probability of having a stable job with an open-ended contract. Four years later, the workshop significantly increases earnings, job satisfaction and employment duration, while the effects of the transportsubsidyhavedissipated. Thesegainsareconcentratedamonggroupswhogenerally have worse labour market outcomes. Overall, our findings highlight that young people possess valuable skills that are unobservable to employers. Making these skills observable generates earning gains that are far greater than the cost of the intervention.

JEL-codes: J22 J24 J61 J64 M53 O18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Anonymity or Distance? Job Search and Labour Market Exclusion in a Growing African City (2021)
Working Paper: Anonymity or Distance? Job Search and Labour Market Exclusion in a Growing African City (2018)
Working Paper: Anonymity or Distance? Job Search and Labour Market Exclusion in a Growing African City (2017)
Working Paper: Anonymity of distance? Job search and labour market exclusion in a growing African city (2017)
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