Barriers and Returns on Job Search Platforms
Understanding specific barriers to job search and returns to relaxing these barriers is important for economists and policymakers. An experiment that changes the default process for initiating job applications increases applications by 600% on a search platform in Pakistan. Perhaps surprisingly, the marginal treatment-induced applications have approximately constant rather than decreasing returns. These results are consistent with a directed search model in which some jobseekers miss some high-return vacancies due to psychological costs of initiating applications. The finding of constant returns to marginal applications, combined with limited spillovers onto other jobseekers, raises the possibility of suboptimally low search effort.
Why Don’t Jobseekers Search More? Barriers and Returns to Search on a Job Matching Platform with Rob Garlick, Nivedhitha Subramanian, and Kate Vyborny
Collaborating Organization: Center for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP)
Funding Organizations: JPAL GEA; USAID DIV
Community Health Workers and Maternal and Child Health (fieldwork in progress)
Community Health Workers (CHWs) are uniquely positioned to reduce maternal and child health disparities in developing countries. Over 4 million CHWs worldwide provide health services to millions of households, with many programs focusing specifically on maternal and child health (MNCH). Despite the wide reach of these programs, there exists little, high-quality evidence on the causal impact of CHWs on MNCH outcomes. In this project, we leverage micro-data from over 100,000 households in Punjab, Pakistan in combination with a quasi-experimental change in CHW coverage. By exploiting the change in coverage, we study: (1) how CHW coverage affects health beliefs, behaviors, and MNCH outcomes; (2) medium-term effects on health outcomes for children exposed to CHW support in utero / in infancy; and (3) how effects evolve over time after a community loses access to a CHW. This project will provide robust evidence on the impact of Punjab’s CHW program and more broadly, the causal impact of CHWs on child and maternal well-being and their role in promoting global health equity.
with Laura Stilwell and Kate Vyborny
Collaborating Organization: Center for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP)
Funding Organization: DUPRI
Institutional Capacity in Community Organizations
This novel field experiment involves a large donor organization and over 800 recipient community organizations across Pakistan in testing (1) whether community organizations can be incentivized to improve their performance through (a) systematic self-assessment and reporting of defined Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and (b) a transparent non financial rewards scheme based on these KPIs; (2) how each part of a large, complex organization (the donor) responds to new information on performance (of recipient organizations) on KPIs; (3) how the responses of both donor and recipients to new information and incentives relate to organizational characteristics of theoretical importance, including divergence of preferences between members of the organization; communication costs between parts of the organization; and decentralization of decision making authority.
with Kate Vyborny
Collaborating Organization: Lahore School of Economics
Funding Organizations: IGC; NSF; Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund
Interactive Mobile Support for Breast Feeding (fieldwork in progress)
Worldwide adoption of WHO-recommended breastfeeding practices – (1) early initiation of breastfeeding, (2) exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months, and (3) continued breastfeeding with appropriate complementary foods until age 2 – could avert over 820,000 deaths of children under 5 years annually (WHO, 2020). Yet, there is a large gap between these recommendations and observed practices, especially in low-resource settings where families have limited interaction with facility-based care. In rural Pakistan, rates of early initiation and exclusivity are low, while infant mortality and malnutrition is high, especially in comparison to peer-nations. In this project, we are designing a mobile health app that aims to strengthen the breastfeeding knowledge and counseling practices of community health workers (CHWs). The mHealth app includes structured algorithms to assist with basic diagnosis for conditions such as mastitis and breast engorgement, suggested advice and video aids to enhance CHWs’ effectiveness in engaging with mothers and influential family members (e.g., grandmothers), and reminders for CHWs to provide breastfeeding advice at key points in time (e.g., before the baby is born). We will use a randomized control trial to test its impact on breastfeeding practices as well as downstream maternal and child health outcomes.
with Yasir Khan, Nicola Singletary, Laura Stilwell, and Kate Vyborny
Collaborating Organizations: Center for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP); The Aga Khan University; UNICEF
Funding Organization: FID; USAID-DIV; Weiss Fund
Land Record Reforms and Female Inheritance (fieldwork in progress)
De jure reforms to improve women’s legal rights are often not enforced in practice. In this study, we examine the effects of a land records reform in Punjab, Pakistan on de facto land rights of females, who are legally entitled to a share of parental land. This reform digitized and centralized land records and created a biometric verification requirement intended to limit females’ exclusion from the inheritance process. Exploiting the staggered rollout of the reform across Punjab as well as the quasi-random timing of father/husband deaths, we find that it significantly increased the probability of female inheritance from 13% to 22%. However, we also find evidence of unintended consequences for younger women: they marry earlier and without consenting to their choice of spouse, marry lower quality spouses, are more likely to have children by their early twenties, and are more likely to drop out of school if they have large, expected increases in inheritance. These responses may be due to intrahousehold resource reallocation away from daughters in response to a forced inheritance transfer. The unintended marriage effects could also be driven by female land inheritance being used as a substitute for more liquid forms of dowry, as well as attempts to keep land in the family, either by marrying daughters off younger to exclude them from family negotiations or through consanguineous marriages.
with Sabrin Beg, Suzanna Khalifa, Jeremy Lebow, and Kate Vyborny.
Collaborating Organization: Centre for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP)
Funding Organizations: IGC; NBER; NSF; The World Bank
Misreported Qualifications in Job Search and Hiring
Misinformation in the job market, such as candidates exaggerating or fabricating information on their CVs, can reduce firms’ willingness to hire job candidates, particularly outside their existing networks. It can in turn reduce jobseekers’ willingness to invest in their skills if they anticipate they cannot distinguish themselves from the competition who they anticipate may be exaggerating on their CVs. These problems may reduce total employment and earnings and inhibit skills investments, ultimately reducing economic growth. In this project, we run two experiments as part of a job search assistance service in Pakistan, Job Talash, to test whether improving the flow of information available to firms through a centralized reference checking service can change job search, hiring behavior and increase skills investment in jobseekers. The findings from this project will be useful for public policies in Pakistan and in other developing countries to help increase employment and improve skills, ultimately contributing to inclusive economic growth.
with Rob Garlick, Nivedhitha Subramanian, and Kate Vyborny
Collaborating Organization: Centre for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP)
Funding Organizations: DfID-IZA; IGC; NSF; PEDL; Weiss Fund
Survey Design for Employment and Job Search (fieldwork in progress)
There is substantial variation across developing country surveys in labor market measurement. Different surveys appear to use different recall periods, definitions of employment and search, and levels of detail in prompts. This variation may reflect open questions about how best to collect labor market data in these settings. For example, there is recent evidence that labor market measures are sensitive to changes in recall periods and detail of employment questions, with mixed evidence on changes in survey medium and use of proxy respondents. Labor modules based on Living Standards and Measurement Surveys have been carefully designed to measure labor in agricultural settings. But these are less tailored to urban labor markets. National Labor Force Surveys often use short surveys that imperfectly capture nuances like occasional work, irregular payment periods, unpaid family work, and multiple jobs. We carry out a series of survey methods experiments in the context of a large panel study in Lahore, Pakistan. We will use these experiments to understand how variations in survey frequency, recall periods, and questionnaire design influence measures of job search, employment, and earnings.
with Rob Garlick, Nivedhitha Subramanian, and Kate Vyborny
Collaborating Organization: Centre for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP)
Funding Organization: IPA
Women’s Mobility and Labor Market Access
In many contexts with conservative norms or high crime, female workers may face greater restrictions on their physical mobility. We study how women’s labor supply decisions are shaped by access to different types and costs of commuting. We work with a job search platform in Lahore, Pakistan, a context with low female labor force participation and employment. We randomly offer some female subscribers a minibus service for commuting, randomly varying both the price of the service and whether men are also permitted to use the service. We show that offers of women-only transport substantially increase job application rates on the platform, by as much as large price reductions. This suggests that sharing transport with men poses a substantial deterrent to women’s labor supply, potentially due to concerns about safety or violating norms.
with Rob Garlick and Kate Vyborny
Collaborating Organization: Centre for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP)
Funding Organization: 3IE; ADB; DfID-IZA; IGC; J-PAL USI; NSF; PEDL
