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.

该奖项是作为NSF社会，行为和经济科学博士后研究奖学金（SPRF）计划的一部分提供的，并得到了经济学计划的支持。 SPRF计划的目标是为学术界，工业或私营部门以及政府的科学职业准备有前途的早期职业博士学位科学家。 SPRF奖项涉及在既定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试图促进科学界各个细分市场的科学家的参与，包括来自代表性不足的群体的研究计划和活动；博士后时期被认为是实现这一目标的重要水平。每个博士后研究员都必须解决重要的科学问题，以推进各自的学科领域。在卡内基·梅隆大学（Carnegie Mellon University）的索拉布·巴尔加瓦（Saurabh Bhargava）博士的赞助下，这项博士后奖学金奖支持了一位早期的职业科学家，研究求职行为。具体而言，本研究探讨了影响失业过程中求职的心理因素。许多人发现寻找工作不愉快和令人沮丧的经历。拟议的研究旨在测试这些假设，并就心理机制提供新的见解，从而阻碍最佳的工作搜索行为。这些见解可以直接告知用于改善搜索行为的政策类型，并加快求职者找到合适的就业的速度。该项目旨在通过测试搜索工作和策略的最佳假设以及对心理因素的假设，例如灰心，例如，探索工作的最佳假设，例如灰心。行为见解影响劳动经济学的速度缓慢的原因之一是在实验室现实地捕获劳动力市场动态的困难。这项研究将通过利用有关数十万个求职者在线求职行为的现实数据的访问以及与失业的求职者进行实地实验来解决这一差距。总体而言，这将提供有关（i）个人搜索（包括努力和搜索工资）的新证据，（ii）相对于标准模型的基准的最佳性，以及（iii）失业的心理后果及其对搜索的影响。此外，它将测试旨在改善工作结果的心理知情干预措施。有关失业求职者是否次优于工作的证据，如果是的话，哪些具体的干预措施可以改善搜索措施将对经济理论建模应为求职决策和失业造成影响。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并认为通过使用基金会的知识分子和更广泛的影响来审查Criteria的评估。