nep-hrm New Economics Papers
on Human Capital and Human Resource Management
Issue of 2021‒10‒25
three papers chosen by
Patrick Kampkötter
Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen

  1. Gender Preferences in Job Vacancies and Workplace Gender Diversity By David Card; Fabrizio Colella; Rafael Lalive
  2. The Dynamics of Referral Hiring and Racial Inequality: Evidence from Brazil By Conrad Miller; Ian Schmutte
  3. Teachers’ Willingness to Pay for Retirement Benefits: A National Stated Preferences Experiment By Fuchsman, Dillon; McGee, Josh; Zamarro, Gema

  1. By: David Card; Fabrizio Colella; Rafael Lalive
    Abstract: In spring 2005, Austria launched a campaign to inform employers and newspapers that gender preferences in job advertisements were illegal. At the time over 40% of openings on the nation’s largest job-board specified a preferred gender. Over the next year the fraction fell to under 5%. We merge data on filled vacancies to linked employer-employee data to study how the elimination of gender preferences affected hiring and job outcomes. Prior to the campaign, most stated preferences were concordant with the firm’s existing gender composition, but a minority targeted the opposite gender - a subset we call non-stereotypical vacancies. Vacancies with a gender preference were very likely (>90%) to be filled by someone of that gender. We use pre-campaign vacancies to predict the probabilities of specifying preferences for females, males, or neither gender. We then conduct event studies of the effect of the campaign on the predicted preference groups. We find that the elimination of gender preferences led to a rise in the fraction of women hired for jobs that were likely to be targeted to men (and vice versa), increasing the diversity of hiring workplaces. Partially offsetting this effect, we find a reduction in the success of non-stereotypical vacancies in hiring the targeted gender, and indications of a decline in the efficiency of matching. For the much larger set of stereotypical vacancies, however, vacancy filling times, wages, and job durations were largely unaffected by the campaign, suggesting that the elimination of stated preferences had at most small consequences on overall job match efficiency.
    JEL: J16 J63
    Date: 2021–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:29350&r=
  2. By: Conrad Miller (University of California-Berkeley and NBER); Ian Schmutte (University of Georgia)
    Abstract: We study how referral hiring contributes to racial inequality in firm-level labor demand over the firm’s life cycle using data from Brazil. We consider a search model where referral networks are segregated, firms are more informed about the match quality of referred candidates, and some referrals are made by nonreferred employees. Consistent with the model, we find that firms are more likely to hire candidates and less likely to dismiss employees of the same race as the founder, but these differences diminish as firms’ cumulative hires increase. Referral hiring helps to explain racial differences in dismissals, seniority, and employer size.
    Keywords: referral hiring, search model, match quality, racial differences, Brazil
    JEL: D83 J15 J23 J42 J63 L25
    Date: 2021–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:upj:weupjo:21-352&r=
  3. By: Fuchsman, Dillon (Sinquefield Center for Applied Economic Research, Saint Louis University); McGee, Josh (University of Arkansas); Zamarro, Gema (University of Arkansas)
    Abstract: Many states have recently made or are considering changes to their teacher retirement systems. However, little is known about how teachers value various elements of their retirement benefits versus other aspects of their jobs and compensation. To help alleviate this gap, we use a discrete choice stated preferences experiment embedded in a nationally representative survey of teachers to estimate their willingness-to-pay for various retirement plan characteristics and other non-salary job components. We find that teachers would be indifferent between a traditional pension and alternative retirement plan designs if the alternatives were paired with 2 to 3 percent salary increases. Our results indicate that experience is a significant mediator of retirement plan preferences. While more experienced teachers are willing to pay more to keep their traditional pension plans, inexperienced teachers do not have strong preferences around retirement plan type. However, teachers’ willingness-to-pay for traditional pension plans is less than their willingness-to-pay for many other elements of their compensation, including the value of retirement benefits, retirement age, salary growth, healthcare coverage, and Social Security enrollment.
    Keywords: teacher pensions; stated preferences; discrete choice experiment
    JEL: I20 J33
    Date: 2021–10–19
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:sluecr:2020_003&r=

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