Essays on job search and retraining

This thesis comprises three essays in empirical labor economics. Broadly, the essays provide evidence on the existence and the effects of information barriers in situations of job search and retraining. Chapter 1 (coauthored with Esther Mbih) begins from the observation that little is known about how job seekers decide to enroll in a training program. Decisions related to job training might be undermined by informational gaps, especially about program costs, enrollment procedures, and expectations of reemployment chances. The paper reports the results of a low-cost intervention aimed at testing for the existence of misinformation about training costs and returns, and its impact on enrollment. Partnering with the French Public Employment Services and the largest training provider in France, we sent 50,000 emails advertising training opportunities to job seekers in four regions of France in late summer 2016.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Ben Dhia, Aicha(Aicha Lucie)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Esther Duflo and Frank Schilbach.

• Economics.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/129006

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/129006