Opening the Black Box of the Matching Function: The Power of Words

Ioana Marinescu and Ronald Wolthoff

No 9071, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: How do employers attract the right workers? How important are posted wages vs. other job characteristics? Using data from the leading job board CareerBuilder.com, we show that most vacancies do not post wages, and, for those that do, job titles explain more than 90% of the wage variance. Job titles also explain more than 80% of the across-vacancies variance in the education and experience of applicants. Finally, failing to control for job titles leads to a spurious negative elasticity of labor supply. Thus, our results uncover the previously undocumented power of words in the job matching process.

Keywords: online job search; wages; vacancies; wage variance; occupations; skills (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J31 J63 J64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45 pages
Date: 2015-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

Published - published in: Journal of Labor Economics, 2020, 38 (2), 535–568

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Related works:
Journal Article: Opening the Black Box of the Matching Function: The Power of Words (2020)
Working Paper: Opening the Black Box of the Matching Function: The Power of Words (2016)
Working Paper: Opening the Black Box of the Matching Function: the Power of Words (2016)
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