Ethnic network effects and location sorting in integration - Trine Jensen

Abstract

Using the Danish longitudinal register data, I explore the effects of differences in access to networks caused by the Danish Spatial Dispersal policy. Using a research design instrumenting the actual experienced network size with the expected network size, I exploit a given year’s variation in quota access to explore the differing effects of ethnic network across absolute size of the network. 

Directed Search in the Labor Market: Unpacking Job Application Strategies Using Data From an Online Job Board- Damian Vergara 

Abstract

This work-in-progress uses data from a large online job board in Uruguay to empirically explore the extent of directed search in the labor market. The data contains a decade of detailed information on vacancies, applicants, and applications. In the cross-section, we document that applicants are much more likely to target occupations than industries and, for a subset of occupations -- clerical support workers, sales workers, and elementary occupations --, they apply more often to vacancies that post higher wages. We then use NLP techniques to scrap non-wage amenities from the job ads. Preliminary results suggest that these amenities are valued by workers and affect application strategies but mainly when vacancies do not post wages, hinting the existence of a lexicographic application strategy. We finally merge the vacancy data with data from collective bargaining agreements that provide minimum wage variation at the industry by occupation level. Using two different research designs, we show that, for the same subset of occupations flagged in the descriptive analysis, minimum wage increases induce more applications, thus corroborating the cross-sectional pattern of directed search. The causal exercise suggests positive, finite, and significant elasticities of applications to wages that are consistent with the estimated firm-level labor supply elasticities from the empirical monopsony literature.