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  • Review of Economic Studies

Landing the First Job: The Value of Intermediaries in Online Hiring

By: Christopher Stanton and Catherine Thomas
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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

Marketplace Matching; Agency Theory

Citation

Stanton, Christopher, and Catherine Thomas. "Landing the First Job: The Value of Intermediaries in Online Hiring." Review of Economic Studies 83, no. 2 (April 2016): 810–854.
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About The Author

Christopher T. Stanton

Entrepreneurial Management
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