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

该奖项是美国国家科学基金会社会、行为和经济科学博士后研究奖学金（SPRF）项目的一部分，由经济学项目提供支持。SPRF计划的目标是为学术界、工业界或私营部门和政府的科学事业准备有前途的早期职业博士级科学家。SPRF奖励包括在知名科学家的赞助下进行为期两年的培训，并鼓励博士后进行独立研究。美国国家科学基金会寻求促进科学界各阶层的科学家，包括那些未被充分代表的群体的科学家，参与其研究项目和活动；博士后阶段被认为是实现这一目标的一个重要的专业发展阶段。每个博士后必须解决各自学科领域的重要科学问题。在卡耐基梅隆大学的Saurabh Bhargava博士的赞助下，该博士后奖学金支持研究求职行为的早期职业科学家。具体而言，本研究探讨了失业期间影响求职的心理因素。许多人觉得找工作的经历不愉快，令人沮丧。这项拟议中的研究旨在检验这些假设，并为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求职行为的政策类型，并加快求职者找到合适工作的速度。该项目旨在通过测试关于搜索努力和策略的最优性的基本假设，以及假设的不相关心理因素（如气馁），为经济学家对求职行为的理解做出贡献。行为洞见对劳动经济学影响缓慢的一个原因是，很难在实验室中真实地捕捉劳动力市场动态。这项研究将利用数十万求职者在线求职行为的真实数据，以及对失业求职者的实地实验，来解决这一差距。总的来说，这将为(i)个人如何搜索，包括努力和搜索工资，（ii）相对于标准模型的基准，这种搜索的最优性，以及（iii）失业的心理后果及其对搜索的影响提供新的证据。此外，它将测试旨在改善工作结果的心理知情干预措施。关于失业求职者是否以次优方式寻找工作，以及如果是这样，哪些具体的干预措施可以改善寻找工作的证据，将对经济理论如何模拟求职决策和失业产生影响。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.