A Signal of (Train)ability? Grade Repetition and Hiring Chances

Stijn Baert and Matteo Picchio

Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium from Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration

Abstract: This article contributes to the nascent literature on the effect of grade retention in school on later labour market success. A field experiment is conducted to rule out the endogeneity of both outcomes. More concretely, various treatments of grade retention are randomly assigned to fictitious résumés sent in application to real vacancies. Overall, grade retention does not significantly affect positive call-back by employers. However, when narrowing in on vacancies for occupations where on-the-job training is important, job candidates with a record of grade retention are 16% less likely to receive a positive reaction. This finding is consistent with Queuing theory.

Keywords: grade retention; hiring youth; training; signalling; queuing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 I21 J23 J70 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2020-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://wps-feb.ugent.be/Papers/wp_20_999.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: A signal of (Train)ability? Grade repetition and hiring chances (2021)
Working Paper: A SIGNAL OF TRAIN(ABILITY)? GRADE REPETITION AND HIRING CHANCES (2020)
Working Paper: A Signal of (Train)Ability? Grade Repetition and Hiring Chances (2020)
Working Paper: A Signal of (Train)ability? Grade Repetition and Hiring Chances (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rug:rugwps:20/999

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium from Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Nathalie Verhaeghe ().