Todd Kaplan: Increasing Employment with Coarse Information

Seminar
This event has now finished.
  • Date and time: Wednesday 12 February 2025, 1pm to 2pm
  • Location: In-person only
    A/EC201 Economics Staff Room
  • Audience: Open to staff, students
  • Admission: Free admission, booking not required

Event details

Author: Todd Kaplan (Exeter)

Abstract: We investigate whether an agency can increase employment by strategically coarsening information about workers’ skills and abilities to employers. Theoretically, we find that such an increase is possible, and a range of employment levels can be supported in equilibrium. We test this possibility using laboratory experiments under three conditions: full information, coarse and verifiable information, and coarse but not verifiable information. We find that, compared with full information, both treatments with coarse information increase employment at the expense of the employers’ profits but not to the highest theoretically achievable levels. We also find that verifiability affects several aspects of behavior

Co-authors: Surajeet Chakravarty and Luke Lindsay

Host: Yuan Ju (York)