Academic Papers
PUBLICATIONS
Do informational frictions affect enrollment in public-sponsored training? Results from an online experiment
(with A. Ben Dhia). Annals of Economics and Statistics, No. 152 (December 2023), pp.1-42 [Paper]
Despite massive and increasing public spending in training for the unemployed, 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. This 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. We randomly added short messages on training costs, registration procedures, and training returns to the basic email template.We find that receiving an email with a message emphasizing training returns in terms of employment more than doubles the likelihood that job seekers call back the training center. However, callback rates are low in absolute value (less than one percent) and we detect no impact on enrollment one to six months after the intervention. We provide suggestive evidence that the effects on callbacks are driven by increasing salience of basic information about training rather than by belief updating.
Paper awarded by the 2023 ADRES Best Young Paper Award
Can a Website Bring Unemployment Down? Effects of an Online Platform on Job Search Efficiency,
(with A. Ben Dhia, B. Crépon, L. Paul-Delvaux, B. Picard and V. Pons). Conditionally accepted by the Journal of Labor Economics
We evaluate the impact of Bob Emploi, a digital platform designed to provide personalized job search advice and coaching to the unemployed. The platform, developed by a nonprofit organization with access to France’s public employment agency data, aims to replicate traditional counseling services through automated tools. Our experiment included 212,277 individuals, with 56.3% randomly assigned to receive encouragement to use the platform. While our intervention increased Bob Emploi’s usage by 27 percentage points, the effects of the platform remained limited. Users made modest changes to their search methods, showed slightly higher engagement with standard employment services, and felt more supported in their search. However, we find no impact on time spent searching, occupational scope, or job seeker well-being. Most importantly, the platform did not improve any employment outcomes over an 18-month follow-up period, with precise null effects across all subgroups. These results suggest that digital job search assistance platforms may need to combine coaching with specific job recommendations to effectively improve job seekers’ labor market outcomes.
WORK IN PROGRESS
Behavioral Barriers to Human Capital Investment - Evidence from French Jobseekers
(with B. Crépon, A. John, and L. Girard)
Despite potentially high gains in labor market outcomes, the demand for vocational training programs in France remains low. We design a survey administered to 20,048 jobseekers that studies the barriers which prevent individuals from taking up vocational training. In addition to "external'' barriers, such as lack of information or inadequate supply, we also investigate "internal'' psychological barriers, including self-efficacy, executive function, and self-control problems. The paper presents the survey and describes its main results, contrasting the prevalence of external and internal barriers for different categories of jobseekers.
Barriers to Human Capital Investment - Barriers about the World, or barriers about the Self ?
(with B. Crépon, A. John, and A. Uhlendorff)
Job Search and the Yellow-Vest Movement
(with E. Sartre)
Can Addressing Health Constraints Improve Job Prospects? Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design
Self-serving bias and discrimination - Evidence from a laboratory experiment