IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/7030.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Testing the importance of search frictions, matching, and reservation prestige through randomized experiments in Jordan

Author

Listed:
  • Groh, Matthew
  • McKenzie, David
  • Shammout, Nour
  • Vishwanath, Tara

Abstract

Unemployment rates for tertiary-educated youth in Jordan are high, as is the duration of unemployment. Two randomized experiments in Jordan were used to test different theories that may explain this phenomenon. The first experiment tested the role of search and matching frictions by providing firms and job candidates with an intensive screening and matching service based on educational backgrounds and psychometric assessments. Although more than 1,000 matches were made, youth rejected the opportunity to even have an interview in 28 percent of cases, and when a job offer was received, they rejected this offer or quickly quit the job 83 percent of the time. A second experiment built on the first by examining the willingness of educated, unemployed youth to apply for jobs of varying levels of prestige. Youth applied to only a small proportion of the job openings they were told about, with application rates higher for higher prestige jobs than lower prestige jobs. Youth failed to show up for the majority of interviews scheduled for low prestige jobs. The results suggest that reservation prestige is an important factor underlying the unemployment of educated Jordanian youth.

Suggested Citation

  • Groh, Matthew & McKenzie, David & Shammout, Nour & Vishwanath, Tara, 2014. "Testing the importance of search frictions, matching, and reservation prestige through randomized experiments in Jordan," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7030, The World Bank.
  • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:7030
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2014/09/15/000158349_20140915090353/Rendered/PDF/WPS7030.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Caroline Krafft & Ragui Assaad, 2020. "Employment’s Role in Enabling and Constraining Marriage in the Middle East and North Africa," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 57(6), pages 2297-2325, December.
    2. Caroline Krafft, 2020. "Why is fertility on the rise in Egypt? The role of women’s employment opportunities," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 33(4), pages 1173-1218, October.
    3. Pellicer, Miquel, 2018. "The evolution of returns to education in the Middle East and North Africa: Evidence from comparable education policy changes in Tunisia," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 183-191.
    4. Caroline Krafft & Reham Rizk, 2018. "The Promise and Peril of Youth Entrepreneurship in MENA," Working Papers 1257, Economic Research Forum, revised 19 Nov 2018.
    5. Assaad, Ragui & Krafft, Caroline & Selwaness, Irene, 2017. "The Impact of Early Marriage on Women’s Employment in the Middle East and North Africa," GLO Discussion Paper Series 66, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    6. Abdellatif Chatri & Khadija Hadef & Naima Samoudi, 2021. "Micro-econometric evaluation of subsidized employment in morocco: the case of the "Idmaj" program," Journal for Labour Market Research, Springer;Institute for Employment Research/ Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), vol. 55(1), pages 1-13, December.
    7. Christopher Blattman & Stefan Dercon, 2016. "Occupational Choice in Early Industrializing Societies: Experimental Evidence on the Income and Health Effects of Industrial and Entrepreneurial Work," Working Papers id:11361, eSocialSciences.
    8. Irene Selwaness & Caroline Krafft, 2021. "The Dynamics of Family Formation and Women’s Work: What Facilitates and Hinders Female Employment in the Middle East and North Africa?," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 40(3), pages 533-587, June.
    9. Baisakhi Marjit & Sugata Marjit & Kausik Gupta & Saibal Kar, 2022. "Indignity of Labor: Role of Occupational Prestige in Unemployment," CESifo Working Paper Series 9945, CESifo.
    10. Elham Taheri & Fatma Güven Lisaniler & Cem Payaslioğlu, 2021. "Female Labour Force Participation: What Prevents Sustainable Development Goals from Being Realised in Iran?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(21), pages 1-17, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Labor Markets; Tertiary Education; Disability; Labor Policies; Labor Management and Relations;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search
    • J08 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics Policies

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:7030. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.