Work in progress

Vacancy Referrals and Broader Job Search: The Role of Caseworkers and Peer Spillovers

This paper provides the first causal evidence of peer-driven behavioral spillovers in public employment services (PES). Using rich Swedish administrative data from 2004–2018 and a difference-in-differences design exploiting caseworker moves across local PES offices, I show that caseworker’s broader vacancy referral behavior—vacancy referrals outside a job seeker’s stated preferences—responds strongly to the peer norms. Moving to an office with a 1 percentage point (p.p.) higher broader-referral rate increases a caseworker’s own broaderreferral propensity by 0.35 p.p. I then examine how these practice-environment shocks of the movers (caseworkers) affect their job seekers; and I find that job seekers’ re-employment probability (within 180 days) reduces by 0.015 p.p. when their caseworkers are exposed to 10 p.p. higher broader referral environment. These findings are consistent with evidence from mandated broader-search policies (Van der Klaauw and Vethaak, 2022) and stand in contrast to settings where broader referrals are given as informational nudge (Belot et al., 2019; Belot et al., 2022). Taken together, the evidence shows that local peer norms is important, and can have unintended consequences for job seekers’ reemployment prospects.

Returns to Breaking the Norm: Evidence from job referrals [with Jonas Cederlöf and Johan Vikström]

In this paper, we estimate the impact of caseworker gender-norm non-stereotypicality on job seekers’ labor-market outcomes by exploiting as-if random variation generated by the assignment of job seekers in Sweden to caseworkers based on their date of birth. We show that non-stereotypical caseworkers—those who provide less gender-typed vacancy referrals—help shorten unemployment durations and improve subsequent employment outcomes. Leveraging detailed administrative data, we further document substantial heterogeneity in these effects across different groups of job seekers. 

Financing secondary education: closing gaps or boosting grades?

This paper provides the first causal evaluation of Bangladesh’s Monthly Pay Order (MPO) reform, a payroll subsidy for teachers in non-government secondary schools. Using nationally representative data from 2012–2023 and a regression discontinuity design, I find no effects on student achievement or staffing, but the program modestly increases girls’ secondary enrollment. The effects are similar across regions regardless of poverty levels. The lack of broader impacts may stem from unchanged class sizes, weak accountability, and limited incentives.