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Author: Pellizzari, Michele
Resulting in 2 citations.
1. Pellizzari, Michele
Do Friends and Relatives Really Help in Getting a Good Job?
CEP Discussion Paper 0623, Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics, March 2004.
Also: http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp0623.pdf
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics & Political Science
Keyword(s): Firms; Job Characteristics; Job Search; Social Influences

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Informal contacts are extensively used by both firms and workers to find jobs and fill vacancies. The common wisdom in the economic literature is that jobs created through this channel are of better quality and pay higher wages than jobs created through formal methods. This paper explores the empirical evidence for European countries using the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) and discovers a large cross-country as well as cross-industry variation in the wage differentials between jobs found through informal and formal methods. Across countries and industries wage premiums and wage penalties to finding jobs through personal contacts are equally frequent. This paper argues that such variation can be explained by looking at firms' recruitment strategies. In labour markets where employers invest largely informal recruitment activities, matches created through this channel are likely to be of average better quality than those created through informal networks. A simple theoretical model is used to show that employers invest more in recruitment for high productivity jobs and for positions that require considerable training. The empirical predictions of the theory are successfully tested using industry-level data on recruitment costs. Data from the US is provided for comparison using the NLS.
Bibliography Citation
Pellizzari, Michele. "Do Friends and Relatives Really Help in Getting a Good Job?" CEP Discussion Paper 0623, Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics, March 2004.
2. Pellizzari, Michele
Do Friends and Relatives Really Help in Getting a Good Job?
Industrial and Labor Relations Review 63,3 (April 2010): Article 7.
Also: http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1362&context=ilrreview
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University
Keyword(s): Cross-national Analysis; European Community Household Panel (ECHP); Job Search; Wage Effects

The available empirical evidence on the wage effect of finding jobs through informal contacts is mixed. This author theorizes that, depending upon the efficiency of formal search methods, the use of personal contacts can lead either to a wage premium or to a wage penalty. Using data from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP), the author finds new evidence to suggest that across many of the countries in the European Union, premiums and penalties to finding jobs through personal contacts are equally frequent and are of about the same size. Such cross-country variation seems to reflect differences in the efficiency of formal search channels. In particular, the wage effect of finding jobs through personal contacts is higher in countries with more labor market intermediaries. Differences-in-differences estimates based on the Italian liberalization of the labor recruitment industry confirm this result.
Bibliography Citation
Pellizzari, Michele. "Do Friends and Relatives Really Help in Getting a Good Job?" Industrial and Labor Relations Review 63,3 (April 2010): Article 7.