Landing the first job: the value of intermediaries in online hiring

Christopher Stanton and Catherine Thomas

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Online markets for remote labor services allow workers and firms to contract with each other directly. Despite this, intermediaries - called outsourcing agencies - have emerged in these markets. This paper shows that agencies signal to employers that inexperienced workers are high quality. Workers affiliated with an agency have substantially higher job-finding probabilities and wages at the beginning of their careers compared to similar workers without an agency affiliation. This advantage declines after high-quality non-affiliated workers receive good public feedback scores. The results indicate that intermediaries have arisen endogenously to permit a more efficient allocation of workers to jobs.

Keywords: Labor market intermediation; Offshoring; Incomplete information (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D02 F16 J30 O30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 43 pages
Date: 2014-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/60609/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Landing the First Job: The Value of Intermediaries in Online Hiring (2016)
Working Paper: Landing the first job: the value of intermediaries in online hiring (2016)
Working Paper: Landing The First Job: The Value of Intermediaries in Online Hiring (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:60609

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