Landing the First Job: The Value of Intermediaries in Online Hiring
研究了在线远程劳动市场中，外包中介如何帮助缺乏经验的工人获得第一份工作，发现中介能向雇主传递高质量信号，显著提高工人的求职成功率和初期工资。
Online markets for remote labour services allow workers and firms to contract with each other directly. Despite this, intermediaries—called outsourcing agencies—have emerged in these markets. This article shows that agencies signal to employers that inexperienced workers are high quality. Workers affiliated with an agency have substantially higher job-finding probabilities and wages at the beginning of their careers compared to similar workers without an agency affiliation. This advantage declines after high-quality non-affiliated workers receive good public feedback scores. The results indicate that intermediaries have arisen endogenously to permit a more efficient allocation of workers to jobs.