Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: Worth the Effort: Measuring and Predicting Investment in a Costly Application Process

经济学博士论文研究：值得付出努力：在昂贵的申请过程中衡量和预测投资

• 批准号: 2215332
• 负责人: Lucas Coffman
• 金额: $ 2.35万
• 依托单位: Boston College
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-08-01 至 2023-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2215332&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Economics; Worth

Before firms can hire workers from a pool of applicants, they must attract the right candidates to apply for the job in the first place. On the worker’s side, applying for a job takes time and effort, and (in states where this is legal) sometimes even costs money. While these costs are guaranteed, the desired outcome of an application (a job offer) is usually not; so workers must weigh the real, present cost against the expected future benefit of applying. This project frames applying for a job as a type of investment, and studies how the factors that influence a person’s investment decisions -- such as their willingness to take risks, or how optimistic they are about future returns -- might also affect the decision to apply for a job. Firms might think they are attracting all the best candidates for the job when they are actually discouraging suitable candidates who think applying is too risky or not worth their time (for reasons that have nothing to do with the candidate’s talents and skills). For example, research shows that women on average are less willing to take risks than men are. This implies that, when the outcome of a job application is uncertain or the likelihood of being selected is low, women would be less likely than men to “invest” in the application process, especially if that process is very costly. This project experimentally tests whether changing the cost of applying for a job affects who decides to apply, and whether factors such as gender, willingness to take risks, and the nature of the job affect the degree to which someone gets discouraged by a high application cost. The data gathered from this project should help firms improve their hiring processes to attract the best candidates and reduce unintentional discrimination. This evidence could also be used in other contexts where applications (and application costs) are common, such as higher education.The primary goal of this project is to study how characteristics ostensibly unrelated to on-the-job productivity affect an individual’s willingness to pay an application cost. The project is designed around an experiment in which participants will face random variation in the cost of applying to complete a task for payment. Multiple types of tasks will be offered to subjects. Some subjects will face only a minimal effort cost to apply, while others will face either a higher effort cost or a monetary cost. Any subjects who apply for a task will be asked to bet on their own likelihood of receiving an offer, in order to elicit their expectations. All subjects, regardless of application decisions, will be surveyed on their skills, their beliefs and tastes, and identity characteristics such as gender. The researchers will use the data gathered on which participants applied for which tasks to estimate a probability model of the decision to apply for a job. This model will incorporate the type of task, the nature and magnitude of the application cost, and observable individual characteristics. A separate group of participants will be asked to review applications and select individuals they see as most likely to succeed in the task(s) they applied for, and then the selected applicants will be contacted to complete the task. This second part of the project is designed to test whether changing the nature of an application cost affects the distribution of applicants or a recruiter’s ability to identify the best candidates for a job. Overall, the project aims to contribute to the job search literature by experimentally testing several explanations for why equally qualified candidates may not sort identically across job opportunities.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.

在公司可以从申请者中雇用工人之前，他们必须首先吸引合适的候选人申请工作。在工人方面，申请工作需要时间和精力，（在法律的州）有时甚至要花钱。虽然这些成本是有保证的，但申请（工作机会）的预期结果通常不是;所以工人必须权衡真实的，现在的成本和申请的预期未来收益。这个项目将求职视为一种投资，并研究影响一个人投资决策的因素-例如他们愿意承担风险，或者他们对未来回报的乐观程度-也可能影响求职的决定。公司可能认为他们吸引了所有最好的候选人，但实际上他们是在阻止那些认为申请风险太大或不值得花时间的合适候选人（原因与候选人的才能和技能无关）。例如，研究表明，女性平均比男性更不愿意冒险。这意味着，当工作申请的结果不确定或被选中的可能性很低时，妇女在申请过程中“投资”的可能性比男子小，特别是在申请过程费用很高的情况下。该项目通过实验测试了申请工作的费用是否会影响申请人的决定，以及性别、冒险意愿和工作性质等因素是否会影响申请费用高的人的沮丧程度。该项目收集的数据应有助于企业改善招聘流程，以吸引最佳候选人并减少无意的歧视。这一证据也可以用于其他情况下，应用程序（和应用程序的成本）是常见的，如高等教育，这个项目的主要目标是研究如何表面上无关的特点在职生产力影响个人的意愿支付应用程序的成本。该项目是围绕一个实验设计的，在这个实验中，参与者将面临申请完成任务的费用的随机变化。将向受试者提供多种类型的任务。有些科目将面临只有一个最小的努力成本申请，而其他人将面临更高的努力成本或金钱成本。任何申请任务的受试者都会被要求对自己获得工作机会的可能性下注，以得出他们的期望。所有受试者，无论申请决定，将调查他们的技能，他们的信仰和口味，以及身份特征，如性别。研究人员将利用收集到的数据，即哪些参与者申请了哪些任务，来估计申请工作决定的概率模型。这一模式将包括任务类型、申请成本的性质和幅度以及可观察到的个人特征。将要求一组单独的参与者审查申请，并选择他们认为最有可能成功完成他们申请的任务的个人，然后将联系选定的申请人以完成任务。该项目的第二部分旨在测试改变申请成本的性质是否会影响申请人的分布或招聘人员确定最佳职位候选人的能力。总的来说，该项目旨在通过实验测试几种解释，解释为什么同样合格的候选人可能不会在工作机会中进行相同的排序，从而为求职文献做出贡献。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过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，被认为值得支持。