The Behavioral Economics of Job Search During Unemployment: New Field Evidence on Search and Psychological Frictions

失业期间求职的行为经济学：关于求职和心理摩擦的新实地证据

• 批准号: 1808845
• 负责人: Lynn Conell-Price
• 金额: $ 6.9万
• 依托单位: Conell-Price Lynn
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-09-15 至 2019-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1808845&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Behavioral; Economics; Job; Search; During

This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program and is supported by the Economics program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. Saurabh Bhargava at Carnegie Mellon University, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist studying job search behavior. Specifically, the present research explores the psychological factors that influence job search during unemployment. Many people find the experience of searching for work unpleasant and discouraging. The proposed research aims to test these assumptions and to provide new insights on the psychological mechanisms that might hinder the best possible job-search behaviors. These insights can directly inform the types of policies used to improve search behavior and speed up the pace at which job-seekers find suitable employment.This project aims to contribute to economists' understanding of job search behavior by testing basic assumptions about the optimality of search effort and strategy and the assumed irrelevance of psychological factors such as discouragement. One reason that behavioral insights have been slow to affect labor economics is the difficulty of capturing labor market dynamics realistically in the laboratory. This research will address this gap by leveraging access to real-world data on the online job search behavior of several hundred thousand job seekers, and a field experiment with unemployed job seekers. Collectively, this will provide new evidence on (i) how individuals search, including effort and search wages, (ii) the optimality of such search relative to a benchmark of the standard model, and (iii) the psychological consequences of unemployment and their effect on search. Further, it will test psychologically informed interventions intended to improve job outcomes. Evidence on whether unemployed job seekers search suboptimally for work and, if so, what specific interventions can improve search will have implications for how economic theory should model job search decisions and unemployment.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该奖项是 NSF 社会、行为和经济科学博士后研究奖学金 (SPRF) 计划的一部分，并得到经济学计划的支持。 SPRF 项目的目标是为学术界、工业界或私营部门以及政府的科学职业培养有前途的早期职业博士级科学家。 SPRF 奖项包括在知名科学家的赞助下进行两年的培训，并鼓励博士后研究员进行独立研究。 NSF 致力于促进科学界各个领域的科学家（包括来自代表性不足群体的科学家）参与其研究计划和活动；博士后时期被认为是实现这一目标的重要专业发展阶段。每个博士后研究员必须解决推动各自学科领域发展的重要科学问题。在卡内基梅隆大学 Saurabh Bhargava 博士的赞助下，该博士后奖学金资助一位研究求职行为的早期职业科学家。具体来说，本研究探讨了失业期间影响求职的心理因素。许多人发现寻找工作的经历令人不愉快且令人沮丧。拟议的研究旨在检验这些假设，并就可能阻碍最佳求职行为的心理机制提供新的见解。这些见解可以直接告知用于改善搜索行为并加快求职者找到合适工作的政策类型。该项目旨在通过测试有关搜索最优性的基本假设，促进经济学家对求职行为的理解努力和策略以及假设的心理因素（例如灰心）的无关性。行为洞察对劳动力经济学影响缓慢的原因之一是难以在实验室中真实地捕捉劳动力市场动态。这项研究将通过利用数十万求职者在线求职行为的真实数据以及对失业求职者进行现场实验来解决这一差距。总的来说，这将为以下方面提供新的证据：（i）个人如何搜索，包括努力和搜索工资，（ii）此类搜索相对于标准模型基准的最优性，以及（iii）失业的心理后果及其影响在搜索中。此外，它将测试旨在改善工作成果的心理干预措施。关于失业求职者寻找工作是否不理想的证据，如果是这样，哪些具体干预措施可以改善寻找工作，将对经济理论如何模拟求职决策和失业产生影响。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并被认为值得通过以下方式获得支持：使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估。